Payments For Placements at University of Denver's School of Social Work

I am an RN who values the complementary perspective that social workers bring to patient, client and community care. Social work students should be paid a living wage for their valuable labor. According to MIT's Living Wage Study, living wage for a single childless adult is $19.62/hr and $38.42 for a single parent with one child. Underpaying social workers contributes to social worker burnout and lack of continuity in patient/client care, which drives worse clinical outcomes and social workers leaving the profession.

This move is critical to achieving greater equity and diversity in our profession and in the communities we serve.

This is necessary!

GSSW's Payment for Placements initiative is a concept we support. Currently students are required to get field experience to graduate, but are not getting compensation and actually have to pay for their field hours. Many students have to get part time jobs on top of being a full time student and putting in an average of 15 hours a week towards their field placements to pay for necessities like groceries and rent. 350 Colorado is a non-profit with interns from du's gssw program that deserve to get compensated for their field work. Thank you.

As someone who has seen firsthand how hard students must work to balance school, an unpaid internship, and work to support themselves, it is high time that we change the model! We must support young professionals better and prevent burnout and overwhelm when possible. Let’s start with this critical piece!

I have been struggling with classes, and job and an internship on top of everything. I can’t return to classes until I save enough for rent and other basics (even after aid), and even then I’ll be squeezing by on bills. Why don’t we get compensated for our internship work? Right now we are literally paying you to work and receiving nothing in return. Not even experience because most of the “approved agencies” aren’t even teaching us anything. Just wasting our time. Give us compensation for our time and efforts so I can return to classes!!

By requiring students to take unpaid placements, you’re teaching them that their time and effort isn’t worthy of due compensation. Go P4P!

I have no days off because I have classes, practicum, and I have to work on the days I’m not doing those things because I have bills to pay and loans don’t cover everything. School is not the only thing people have going on. I am overworked, over stressed, and often have to give up things like sleep and self care in order to fit my homework and asynchronous work in. I am also giving up hours that I could be making money and decreasing financial strain by having to go to my practicum. Free labor does not seem to be in the spirit of social work and the changes social work is making to try and mitigate burnout and emphasize “self care/squad care.”

Thank you for your consideration!

100% in support

Go girl!

I hope this can happen. This is such an important idea and students deserve compensation for their contributions to their field placements!

Show your students the Justice they are being taught to show others!

Unpaid labor is antithetical to the values of social work and creates inhumane conditions for social work students

In my field placement, I find that I’m doing a lot of the same work as the social workers getting paid, and sometimes I’m doing more. I’m doing this while maintaining a full course load and working about 30 hours a week. We should be paid for placement.

Mother of a 2nd year DU MSW student.

*Against Injustice.

Placements in 2022 need to be paid. As future social workers fighting for injustice and helping our clients, it's important that we fight and advocate for ourselves too. As graduate students we're already struggling with loans, cost of living, rent, etc. And our work and dedication to appear at a placement should be acknowledged with payment. Also the fact that we may be in a bad placement as well needs to be addressed, as many of my peers, myself included have left our current placements in search of better ones that best fit our learning needs and goals. It's contributing to constant stress. So many barriers to enter social work including unpaid internships, which again is complete nonsense in any setting especially in 2022 when we discuss inflation and workers rights in the US, which should apply to us as well. It's sadly become a norm to attribute placement stress and frustration about labor with no pay, as "normal or growing pains" to Foundation year students, and I for one am glad my fellow peers have stood up to that narrative and advocated for placement switches despite push back. Payment needs to be seriously considered with a tangible and actionable plan set in place for all of us at GSSW, rather than just words to appease us. I stand in solidarity with my fellow GSSW peers.

Yes to P4P!

We work so hard in field placements that we have to pay to have. Cost of tuition is already high enough, and students deserve to be compensated for the mass amounts of time and energy we put into our work outside of the classroom.