Texas LCSW Supervision Requirements: 100 Hours, Capped at 10 a Month

100 Hours Minimum, 10 Hours Maximum a Month

An LMSW working toward LCSW licensure needs a minimum of 100 hours of supervisory sessions across the 3,000 hours of supervised professional clinical experience (22 TAC 781.401(a)(1)(D)). That is the floor everyone quotes. The rule that actually governs your pace sits right next to it: no more than 10 hours of supervision may be counted in any one month, or 30-day period (781.403(b)(8)).

Here is the sentence that separates this page from a rulebook summary: you cannot front-load supervision. Banking 20 hours of supervision in one busy month gets you 10 hours of credit, not 20. The other 10 are not counted later either; they are simply gone. The 100-hour minimum is a target you build up over many separate months, not a total you can rush by scheduling extra sessions when your calendar happens to be free. For the difference between this supervision total and your 3,000 hours of clinical experience, see what counts as clinical hours for LCSW in Texas.

Supervision Scales With Your Actual Hours Worked

Chapter 781 states the pacing rule directly: "Supervision shall occur in proportion to the number of actual hours worked" (781.403(b)(8)). Full-time and part-time LMSWs are not held to the same weekly supervision schedule, but both are held to the same 100-hour total and the same 10-hour monthly ceiling.

BHEC's own supervision FAQ works the arithmetic for a full-time schedule: an LMSW working 30 or more hours a week with 1 hour of supervision a week accumulates roughly 104 supervision hours over 24 months, comfortably past the 100-hour floor. For part-time work, a supervisor may adjust the frequency and duration of sessions so the 100 hours still land at approximately the 3,000-hour mark rather than finishing early or lagging far behind. In practice that means a part-time LMSW meets less often per week but for a longer stretch of months, keeping supervision proportional to hours actually worked rather than to the calendar alone.

Run your own numbers by the month, not the week. Spread evenly across the 24-month floor, 100 hours works out to a little over 4 hours a month, well under the 10-hour ceiling, which is exactly why the cap rarely bites an LMSW who meets on a steady schedule. It only becomes a problem when supervision is irregular: a supervisor who skips two months and then tries to catch up with a 20-hour session block still only banks 10 hours of credit for that month, and the two skipped months are not recovered by it.

Individual and Group Supervision, and What Counts as an Hour

A supervision hour is defined as a minimum of 60 minutes in length (22 TAC 781.102(50)). Individual supervision means one supervisor working with one supervisee (781.102(33)). Group supervision means a minimum of two and a maximum of six supervisees with one supervisor (781.102(27); 781.403(b)(5)). Both formats can be delivered in person or via HIPAA-compliant audio or web (781.403(b)(4)-(5)).

Chapter 781 states no individual-supervision minimum for this track. A claim repeated across several third-party guides says half of your 100 hours must be individual. That is not in the March 2026 rulebook. Flag it as unverified rather than building your supervision schedule around it, and confirm the split you and your LCSW-S plan to use directly on your Clinical Supervision Plan.

Who Can Supervise an LMSW Toward LCSW

Only an LCSW with supervisor status, an LCSW-S, may supervise your hours on this track (22 TAC 781.402(a)(3); 781.402(b)(1)). An LCSW without the supervisor designation cannot sign your Clinical Supervision Plan, regardless of experience. To become an LCSW-S, a social worker must be an active LCSW in good standing, have practiced in that category for two years, and have completed a 40-hour supervisor training (781.404(a)).

Supervisor status costs $54 to apply for and adds $50 at renewal (22 TAC 885.1). Before signing a plan with anyone, verify their license and supervisor status on BHEC's Verify-a-License lookup, or find one through Find a Supervisor.

One structural difference from Texas's other two supervised tracks: there is no limit on concurrent supervisors on the LCSW track. Texas caps LPC Associates and LMFT Associates at two supervisors at a time, but Chapter 781 sets no such ceiling for an LMSW working toward LCSW. Each LCSW-S you add still needs a separate signed plan and files a separate verification form.

The Clinical Supervision Plan Has to Exist Before Hours Accrue

A supervision plan is required on the Council form, or a substantially equivalent one, signed by the LMSW and the LCSW-S before hours start accumulating (22 TAC 781.405(a); 781.403(b)(2)). It has to be updated on any change of agency, job, goals, or supervision method. Hours logged before the plan exists are not protected the way hours logged under a signed plan are. See the Clinical Supervision Plan and verification forms for exactly what goes on each document.

If your supervisor works outside your employing agency, that outside supervisor needs written employer approval on the employer's letterhead before supervision counts (781.403(a)(2)). This comes up most often for LMSWs in small agencies or private settings where no on-site LCSW-S is available, so confirm the approval letter is in hand before your first supervised session, not after.

What Your LCSW-S Has to Keep on File

The record-keeping burden sits with your supervisor. Under 22 TAC 781.403(b)(1), an LCSW-S must maintain the signed supervision plan, a job description for each position you hold, your practice locations, a log of your experience and supervision hours showing the date and duration of each meeting along with your accumulated clinical hours, a custody plan for the records, the employer approval letter if applicable, and a remediation plan if one was needed.

The log is the piece that matters most if your application is ever questioned. BHEC does not just want a running total; it wants the date and duration of every single meeting, tied to the accumulated clinical hours you had at that point. An LCSW-S who only keeps a monthly summary, rather than a session-by-session log, cannot reconstruct that detail months later if a form gets lost or a question comes up at application review.

There is also a fee rule worth knowing before you agree to pay anyone for supervision: a supervisor who is otherwise compensated for supervisory duties, typically by your employer, may not also charge you for that supervision (781.403(a)(3)).

The 30-Day Verification Deadline

When you ask your supervisor for the verification form, they have 30 days to submit the signed form to BHEC (22 TAC 781.405(c)). It goes to socialwork@bhec.texas.gov. Since supervision on this track has no concurrent-supervisor limit, each LCSW-S you worked with during your 3,000 hours files their own verification form covering their own dates and hours.

One operational note as of September 2026: BHEC's online supervision module for social work was unavailable, so plans and verification forms are going by email rather than through the portal. Confirm with your LCSW-S which submission method BHEC expects as your 30-day window approaches.

Hours That Do Not Count, and Why

Supervision does not count during any period when either the LMSW's or the LCSW-S's license is lapsed, suspended, revoked, or delinquent, unless separately approved (22 TAC 781.403(g)). Check both licenses at renewal time, not just your own.

Supervision also cannot start before your regular license issues. A temporary license cannot begin the supervision process (781.405(e)), so hours logged while holding only a temporary credential do not carry forward once the Texas LMSW license is issued.

Worth one line: 781.402, 781.403, 781.405, 781.406, and 781.407 are all new as of March 18, 2026, but the current Clinical Supervision Verification Form for LCSW is dated 9/25/2025, meaning it predates the rules it now supports. Check the SW Forms and Publications page for a newer version before you send anything in.

Common Supervision Mistakes on the LMSW to LCSW Track

These are the errors that show up most often once an LMSW's supervision record gets a closer look.

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FAQ: Texas LCSW Supervision Requirements