As Keggys and amyhalper both pointed out, the difference between art therapy and recreation therapy is often academic. In practice, most employers are insensitive to what makes each discipline unique, because they have not been properly educated about what each has to offer. To make matters worse, a government agency like amyhalper' employer operates according to existing categories that were not created with the academic identities of therapeutic fields in mind. Recreational therapy was just easier to grasp than art therapy for the people who created this employment structure, or a rec therapist just happened to be the one who developed the State program. Regardless of how it began, the reality of practice is now that recreational therapy is more entrenched than art therapy in institutional environments. This reality greatly limits the practice of art therapy.
It is up to art therapy educators to reflect the current reality of practice, not the practice of five years ago, and to give art therapists the tools they need to create favorable work environments, instead of continuing to steer recent graduates into institutions that are hostile to art therapy and end up turning it into something else entirely.