What a California Therapist Must Report to the BBS, and When
A Guide to What the Board Has to Be Told, and How Quickly
Most of what a California licensee or registrant owes the Board of Behavioral Sciences arrives on the renewal application, which is why renewal feels like the whole of the relationship. A second set of duties runs outside that cycle, triggered by events rather than by dates, and each of them carries its own 30-day clock. They are easy to miss precisely because nothing prompts them. No form arrives, no reminder is sent, and the deadline runs from something that happened in the licensee's life rather than from anything the Board did.
Two of these duties changed character on January 1, 2025, when the Board's unprofessional conduct regulations were amended to name the failure to report as misconduct in its own right. Because the failure is now itself a ground, a licensee who reports late brings the Board two matters instead of one, and the second is not answerable on the merits of the first.
This guide covers what has to be reported, what the terms mean, how fast each duty runs, and how the event-driven duties relate to the renewal disclosure. For what the Board is and how it makes its rules, see the guide to the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
These duties are triggered deadlines. They have no fixed date and start running on an event, which is what makes them easy to miss. California Therapist Rules & Deadlines collects them alongside the deadlines that arrive on the calendar.
This guide summarizes published statutes, regulations and agency guidance, and it is not legal advice. Anyone who needs to know how a rule applies to a particular practice should consult their own attorney. Rules verified as of September 20, 2026.
What Must Be Reported Within 30 Days?
The conviction and discipline duties sit in the Board's unprofessional conduct regulations rather than in the statute, which is part of why they are easy to overlook. Section 1845 of title 16 of the California Code of Regulations lists among the acts constituting unprofessional conduct the "Failure to report to the board within 30 days any of the following: (1) A conviction of any felony or misdemeanor, which is not subject to Health & Safety Code sections 11357 (b), (c), (d), (e), or 11360 (b). A conviction includes any verdict of guilty, or plea of guilty or no contest. (2) Any disciplinary action taken by another licensing entity or authority of this state or of another state or an agency of the federal government or the United States military." Section 1881 carries the same language, and the Board's notice of approval states that the same package amended section 1858 alongside them.
Two further 30-day duties come from a different place. Business and Professions Code section 136 provides that "Each person holding a license, certificate, registration, permit, or other authority to engage in a profession or occupation issued by a board within the department shall notify the issuing board at its principal office of any change in the person's mailing address within 30 days after the change, unless the board has specified by regulations a shorter time period." The Board applies that rule to licensees and registrants alike, and it states a parallel 30-day rule for legal name changes.
Taken together that is four events on the same clock, none of which the Board initiates.
What Counts as a Conviction, and What Is Carved Out?
The regulation defines the term inside the sentence that creates the duty: "A conviction includes any verdict of guilty, or plea of guilty or no contest." That reaches the outcomes people do not think of as convictions, most obviously a plea of no contest entered to resolve a matter without admitting anything.
Business and Professions Code section 490 extends the picture on the enforcement side. It provides that "A conviction within the meaning of this section means a plea or verdict of guilty or a conviction following a plea of nolo contendere," and that a board may act "when the time for appeal has elapsed, or the judgment of conviction has been affirmed on appeal, or when an order granting probation is made suspending the imposition of sentence, irrespective of a subsequent order under Section 1203.4 of the Penal Code." A later dismissal under section 1203.4 therefore does not erase the conviction for licensing purposes.
The carve-out is narrow and specific. The regulation excludes a conviction subject to Health and Safety Code sections 11357(b), (c), (d) or (e) or 11360(b), which are cannabis possession and cannabis transportation and sale offenses. Nothing else is excluded. There is no threshold of seriousness, no exception for a misdemeanor, and no exception for an offense unrelated to clinical work. Whether a conviction is substantially related to the qualifications, functions or duties of the profession is the separate question section 490 and section 4982 ask when the Board decides what to do about it, and it does not affect whether the event had to be reported.
What Counts as Discipline by Another Authority?
The regulation reaches "Any disciplinary action taken by another licensing entity or authority of this state or of another state or an agency of the federal government or the United States military." The breadth is in the words "another licensing entity or authority," which is not limited to another behavioral health board and not limited to California.
Three situations are worth naming because clinicians tend to read past them. A licensee who holds a second license in another state and is disciplined there has a reportable event in California. A licensee disciplined by a federal agency, for example in connection with a federal program, has one. And a licensee disciplined by a non-clinical licensing authority still holds a license or registration and is still within the words of the rule.
The regulation names disciplinary action rather than a complaint, an investigation or an allegation. What starts the clock is the action taken.
What Changed on January 1, 2025?
The Office of Administrative Law approved the package on October 9, 2024, and the Board's notice states that "This regulatory action becomes effective on 1/1/2025." The sections amended were 1845, 1858, 1881, 1886.30 and 1886.40 of title 16.
What the amendment does is put the failure to report into the list of acts constituting unprofessional conduct, which is the list the Board works from when it decides whether to discipline a license. The consequence is that a licensee who reports a conviction on day 45 has two matters in front of the Board rather than one, and the second is a matter the licensee created after the first.
The same package revised the citation factors at section 1886.30 and the amount of fines at section 1886.40, which are the provisions that govern citations and administrative fines. The reporting duties and the citation provisions were therefore amended in a single action.
What Must Be Reported When Your Address or Legal Name Changes?
The address duty is statutory and it applies to every board within the Department of Consumer Affairs. Section 136 requires notice of any change in mailing address within 30 days after the change, and it adds that "failure of a licensee to comply with the requirement in subdivision (a) constitutes grounds for the issuance of a citation and administrative fine, if the board has the authority to issue citations and administrative fines." The Board of Behavioral Sciences has that authority.
The address on file is not a formality, because it is the address the Board uses to reach a licensee. Renewal notices, audit notices and enforcement correspondence all go there, and a licensee who has moved without updating the record is not excused from a deadline they did not learn about.
The name duty is set by the Board rather than by statute, and it is keyed to a document rather than to the event. The Board states that "Within 30 days of the issuance of a new government-issued photographic identification, all Licensees and Registrants must update their legal name with the Board." The clock therefore starts when the new identification is issued, not when a marriage or a court order occurs. The Board also requires one additional legal document as proof, being a certified court order, a marriage certificate or a dissolution of marriage, together with current government-issued photographic identification.
Because the clock starts at the document rather than at the event, a licensee who marries in March and replaces their driver license in July owes the report in July, and the Board's record carries the former name until then.
What Does the Renewal Application Ask, and How Is It Different?
Renewal asks a version of the same question on a different schedule. Section 4984 requires a licensee, on or before the expiration date, to "Notify the board whether he or she has been convicted, as defined in Section 490, of a misdemeanor or felony, or whether any disciplinary action has been taken by any regulatory or licensing board in this or any other state, subsequent to the licensee's last renewal." Section 4984.01 imposes the same disclosure on registrants, alongside the annual law and ethics continuing education certification and the duty to participate in the law and ethics examination each year until it is passed.
The two duties are not alternatives. The renewal disclosure looks backward over a two-year or one-year window and asks what happened. The 30-day duty runs forward from each event. A licensee who is convicted in month three of a two-year cycle owes the report in month three and owes the disclosure twenty-one months later, and answering the second does not cure a failure on the first.
What renewal requires more generally, including the continuing education certification and the fee schedule now in effect, is covered in the guide to BBS renewal in California.
What This Means for Your Practice
These four duties share a feature that makes them worth writing down somewhere outside the licensee's memory. Each is triggered by an event in ordinary life rather than by a professional one, and none of them generates a reminder. A move, a marriage, a plea entered to end a matter quickly, and a disciplinary outcome in a second state are all things that happen in the middle of everything else.
The 30-day figure is the same across all four, which makes it easy to hold, and what differs is the moment each clock starts. For a conviction it runs from the verdict or the plea, for discipline from the action taken by the other authority, and for an address from the change itself, while for a name it runs from the issuance of the new identification, which is usually later than the marriage or court order that produced it.
The January 2025 amendment changes the cost of getting this wrong rather than the rule itself. A late report is now its own violation, and it is a violation with no defense available on the merits of the underlying event.
A Closer Look at One Program: Sentio University's MFT Track
The following description of one specific MFT program is offered as a concrete example of how a program can prepare students for the legal and ethical demands of practice, not as a recommendation against evaluating other programs. Students should research multiple options and ask each one direct questions about how clinical skill is built and measured.
Sentio University, a nonprofit graduate school based in Los Angeles with a hybrid delivery model that serves students throughout California, offers a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy that meets the Board of Behavioral Sciences educational requirements for the LMFT. The program runs 20 months across 60 units at $1,120 per unit, with weekly online classes and one intensive in-person residency at the start of each semester, in cohorts capped at 24 students at a 4:1 student-to-faculty ratio. It is designed around deliberate practice methodology and is described in peer-reviewed work as the first graduate psychotherapy program to thoroughly integrate deliberate practice, with roughly half of nearly every class session dedicated to active skills training rather than lecture (Rousmaniere and Vaz, 2025, p. 2).
Professional obligations of this kind are taught as part of the curriculum rather than left to be discovered after graduation. The 2026-2027 Academic Catalog places Ethical and Legal Issues (MFT542) in the first semester, and Therapist Career Development (MFT564) in the final semester, where the associateship and licensure application process is covered directly. Students begin clinical work at the Sentio Counseling Center during practicum, which provides more than 400 hours of supervised clinical experience during the degree. Sentio also integrates AI literacy training through its AI certification program for therapists.
Sentio is a small, newer institution, admits only applicants who are California residents or willing to relocate to California and who intend to license in California, and its alumni network is still developing. Prospective students weighing Sentio alongside larger or older programs should factor that into their decision. Learn more at the Sentio MFT program overview, the tuition and fees page, and the Sentio FAQ page.
Making Your Decision
Keep the four reportable events on one page with the date each clock starts from, and put the Board's address-of-record and name-change pages where you will find them rather than searching for them on the day. Note that the regulation counts a plea of no contest as a conviction, and that the only exception it names is the listed cannabis offenses. Answer the renewal question as well, and do not treat it as the report. If you are still choosing a graduate program, ask when law and ethics is taught and whether professional obligations outside the therapy room are covered before students graduate. Program websites describe clinical training in similar language regardless of what is actually happening in classrooms and supervision rooms. Ask every program you are seriously considering whether you can attend a live or online class session before enrolling, and ask to speak with current students and recent graduates about how supervision and skill development function in practice. Reputable programs should welcome the request. Hesitation or refusal is informative on its own. Trust what you see in a classroom over what you read in promotional copy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What must a California therapist report to the BBS within 30 days?
There are four. A conviction of any felony or misdemeanor and any disciplinary action taken by another licensing entity or authority are both reportable within 30 days under the Board's unprofessional conduct regulations. A change of mailing address is reportable within 30 days under Business and Professions Code section 136. The Board states that a change of legal name must be reported within 30 days of the issuance of a new government-issued photographic identification.
What counts as a conviction for BBS reporting purposes?
The regulation states that a conviction includes any verdict of guilty, or plea of guilty or no contest. Business and Professions Code section 490 adds that a board may act when the time for appeal has elapsed, when the judgment has been affirmed on appeal, or when an order granting probation is made suspending the imposition of sentence, irrespective of a later order under Penal Code section 1203.4.
Are any convictions excluded from the BBS reporting duty?
Yes. The regulation excludes a conviction that is subject to Health and Safety Code sections 11357(b), (c), (d) or (e) or 11360(b), which are specified cannabis possession and transportation offenses. Every other felony or misdemeanor conviction falls inside the duty.
What changed for California therapists on January 1, 2025?
A regulatory package approved by the Office of Administrative Law on October 9, 2024 and effective January 1, 2025 amended sections 1845, 1858, 1881, 1886.30 and 1886.40 of title 16 of the California Code of Regulations. The amendment named the failure to report a conviction or discipline within 30 days as unprofessional conduct in its own right, so the failure to report is now a separate ground from the underlying event.
Does reporting a conviction at renewal satisfy the 30-day rule?
No. They are two duties on two clocks. Business and Professions Code section 4984 requires the licensee to notify the Board at renewal whether they have been convicted or disciplined since the last renewal, and the regulations require the same events to be reported within 30 days of their occurrence. A conviction in the first month of a renewal cycle is reportable long before the renewal application exists.
How do I change my address of record with the California BBS?
Business and Professions Code section 136 requires every licensee, certificate holder and registrant of a board within the Department of Consumer Affairs to notify the issuing board of any change in mailing address within 30 days after the change, unless the board has set a shorter period by regulation. The Board states the same 30-day deadline for all licensees and registrants.
What does the BBS require for a legal name change?
The Board states that within 30 days of the issuance of a new government-issued photographic identification, all licensees and registrants must update their legal name with the Board. It also requires one additional legal document as proof of the name change, being a certified court order, marriage certificate or dissolution of marriage, together with a current government-issued photographic identification.
What happens if a therapist does not report a conviction to the BBS?
The failure is itself unprofessional conduct under the amended regulations, which means it is a separate ground for discipline from the conviction. Business and Professions Code section 136 also provides that failure to report an address change is grounds for a citation and administrative fine where the board has that authority, and the same 2025 package revised the Board's citation factors and fine amounts at 16 CCR 1886.30 and 1886.40.
References
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2024). Notice of approval of regulatory action: Unprofessional conduct, citation factors and amount of fines (16 CCR 1845, 1858, 1881, 1886.30 and 1886.40; approved October 9, 2024, effective January 1, 2025). https://www.bbs.ca.gov/pdf/oc_noa_400.pdf
California Board of Behavioral Sciences. (2026). Manage your license or registration. https://www.bbs.ca.gov/licensees/manage.html
California Legislature. (2026a). Business and Professions Code section 136. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=136.
California Legislature. (2026b). Business and Professions Code section 490. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=490.
California Legislature. (2026c). Business and Professions Code section 4982. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=4982.
California Legislature. (2026d). Business and Professions Code section 4984. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=4984.
California Legislature. (2026e). Business and Professions Code section 4984.01. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=4984.01.
California Legislature. (2026f). Health and Safety Code section 11357. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=HSC§ionNum=11357.
California Legislature. (2026g). Health and Safety Code section 11360. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=HSC§ionNum=11360.
Rousmaniere, T., & Vaz, A. (2025). Sentio's clinic-to-classroom method: Bridging deliberate practice and clinical training. Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. https://societyforpsychotherapy.org/sentios-clinic-to-classroom-methodbridging-deliberate-practice-and-clinical-training/
Sentio University. (2026). Academic catalog 2026-2027. https://sentio.org/academic-catalog-1
