What the Mississippi Board of Examiners for Social Workers and Marriage & Family Therapists requires to reach LCSW — supervised hours, exams, continuing education and renewal.
| Credential | Full name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| LSW | Licensed Social Worker | BSW level. |
| LMSW | Licensed Master Social Worker | MSW level. |
| LCSW | Licensed Certified Social Worker | MSW plus two years of supervision. Note the C stands for Certified. |
| Supervised experience | Mississippi counts supervision contact hours and direct client hours rather than a total practice-hour figure — do not compare its numbers directly with states that use a 3,000-hour total |
| Supervision hours | 100 hours derived from at least one hour of face-to-face supervision per week across 24 months |
| Supervision frequency | At least 1 hour face-to-face per week. At least half of supervisory interactions must be individual and face-to-face. A supervisor in a different agency must make on-site visits at least once every 6 months. |
| Minimum elapsed time | 24 months minimum, 36 months maximum. Extensions of up to 6 months beyond 36 may be requested within the 60 days before the period ends. |
| Direct client contact | 1,000 hours of face-to-face client contact during the supervision period, documented on the board's verification form. |
LSW takes the ASWB Bachelors exam (the regulation calls it "basic"), LMSW the ASWB Masters ("intermediate"), and LCSW the ASWB Clinical, taken after supervision is complete. Retakes are allowed every 90 days; after four failures a candidate may appeal to the board.
40 hours per 2-year cycle.
Easy to get wrong. Evaluations are submitted at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months. Missing one creates a gap you cannot backfill.
Mississippi has enacted the Social Work Licensure Compact. Thirty-three jurisdictions have. Enactment is not the same as availability: the Compact Commission has not opened applications and no multistate licenses have been issued yet. Until it goes live, licensure by endorsement remains the route into another state. Where the compact actually stands.
Primary authority: Mississippi Board of Examiners for Social Workers and Marriage & Family Therapists. Where anything on this page differs from the board, the board governs.
We do not publish fee amounts. Boards revise fee schedules without notice and a stale figure on a page people budget from is worse than no figure — use the board link above for current fees.
Requirements change. Confirm anything you intend to act on with the board before you apply. Tell us if something here is out of date and we will correct and re-date the page.
Last reviewed: October 2026 · Next scheduled review: January 2027
This guide is the reference. If you want it turned into dates and a checklist — when to register, when each exam opens to you, what the fees come to — the roadmap builder does that for Mississippi.
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