Advocacy Letter to help social work become more affordable

Dear Lindsey LaPointe,

My name is _____ ________ and as an aspiring social worker I am writing to ask for your support for the urgent need to transition all social work internships from unpaid to paid positions. This change is not only essential for upholding the social justice principles at the heart of our profession, but it is also a vital step toward strengthening the future social services workforce. I will be addressing three key points such as student debt, financial inequity, high cost of living and how they affect interns, and why it is good to have paid internships. Please oppose the continued practice of public universities in Illinois charging social work students tuition for their field placements and assigning students to internships and field placements where they work without any pay or compensation because it creates financial inequities and leave unpaid interns without essential labor protections.

Using the “principal beneficiary test,” police internships are assessed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to see if interns qualify as employees who need to be paid. Although “for-profit” businesses must pay their employees under the FLSA, interns may not be considered as employees and are therefore not compelled to receive payment for their work. The FLSA principal beneficiary test applies to social work interns, because their placements are unpaid because they occur in non-profits and government agencies, which are generally exempt form FLSA wage requirements. I am advocating for the Fair Labor Standards Act to be changed so that it will classify interns as employees and be entitled to minimum wage.  

As a State Representative, I know you can't change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, but Illinois should have a state-level law that does what I propose, and if agencies and universities cannot afford to let social work students do their field placements without paying tuition, nor can they pay stipends to those students, then I would like the state to provide funding to universities and agencies that help social work students gain expertise in field placements to reduce these costs for Illinois social work students.

Unpaid internships create financial hardships for interns in the real-world by requiring them to work for free while still needing to cover basic living expenses, and sometimes even pay for college credit. For example, I attend the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) as an undergraduate student majoring in social work. In addition to the internship credits (for which I must pay tuition), I’m taking out extra loans to pay for living expenses in a new city. Since I have an internship from Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm and class from 6:00 pm to 9:30 pm, I am unable to work part-time. This has created significant financial hardship for a position with no income. I continue to struggle with financial support for housing, food, transportation, and other expenses.

I have also spoken with peers who graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and Master of Social Work (MSW) who are still in debt for more than $70,0000, which is made worse by hundreds of hours of unpaid labor. According to the news article by Metz & Bonila, “MSW students graduate with an average of $68,0000- $76,000 in student loans, burdening social workers and their families for decades after graduation.” Metz & Bonila also disscused how social work education in the U.S. is experiencing a decline in student enrollment across all degree levels and believe that paying social work students for their mandatory internships could help reverse these issues. 

Research has also shown that social work interns in the U.S. are not the only ones who face difficulties with unpaid internships. In the article, “This Unpaid Placement Makes You Poor,” Morley et al. (2023) argues how field education costs are also a burden for international social work interns. According to a study done in 2023 by Morley et al. Australian social work intern’s face financial difficulties during unpaid placements. The Morley et al. (2023) gathered data from 372 interns about their financial situation, income, and how they managed to support themselves during placements. According to the findings, 66% of interns are worried about their financial situation, 17% of interns go without food and other basic necessities, 50% of interns have a weekly spending deficit, and 25% of interns must work at least 20 hours a week to make ends meet (Morley et al., 2023). This demonstrates how the current placement structure is not financially sustainable for many students, potentially affecting their well-being and ability to complete their studies. 

In order to implement a change where social work internships are paid, we need to find a way to secure funding for these positions. We could start by getting various stakeholders, including academic institutions, government officials at both state and federal levels, and organizations that benefit from social work interns, to agree to contribute financially. Sources of funding could include public grants, funding from universities, or policy changes that mandate or incentivize paid internships. In the U.S. and Australia, Metz & Bonila, discussed how they are forming groups like “End Placement Poverty” and “Payment for Placements (P4P)” movements to demand that universities, government agencies, and internship sites start paying social work interns for their labor.

While internships serve as educational opportunities, paid interns would not only help alleviate financial issues but also improve the quality and future of the social work field by valuing student labor, attract a wider, more diverse pool of talent to the social work field, and address the long-term workforce shortage in social services because interns are more motivated and invested in their work, leading to better outcomes for clients and agencies. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jasmine Gaines

References

Metz, E., & Bonila, P. O. (n.d.). Can paid internships save social work? Global Social Service Workforce Alliance. https://socialserviceworkforce.org/blog/can-paid-internships-save-social-work/

Morley, C., Hodge, L., Clarke, J., McIntyre, H., Mays, J., Briese, J., & Kosleck, T. (2023). This unpaid placement makes you poor: Australian social work students’ experiences of the financial burden of field education. Social Work Education, 43(4), 1039–1057. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2022.216150

US Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. (2010). Fact sheet# 71: Internship programs under the fair labor standards act. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships

This is an example of issue advocacy, where you bring a problem to the attention of someone in government and suggest why the problem must be solved and make some general recommendations of how the problem might be solved.  The problem of unpaid internships and tuition expenses for students who must do field placements or practicums in non-profit or government sectors (including social workers, school teachers, and most nursing students, but also some political science and exercise science students) could be addressed at the federal level or at the state level.  You have decided to write your letter to a person in the Illinois General Assembly, so it's appropriate for you to emphasize the importance of state-level interventions to solve the problem.  Also, you wrote to a member of the state General Assembly who is herself a social worker, and that makes sense.  Maybe you could have written this letter to all three of the social workers in the General Assembly. 

I think you make a good point when you highlight declining numbers of students earning social work degrees just as the demand for qualified social workers is increasing. You also make a good moral argument about the unfairness of the situation. Although Representative LaPointe is a liberal (a progressive), so arguments based on care and justice ethics are likely to work best, if you included Haas (a Republican), you would probably have emphasized more the effort of social work students to become financially independent as self-reliant professionals, and said something more about the tens of thousands of dollars in student debt that newer social workers may cary as they enter the field, and how those debts might drive them from the social work field into fields using similar skills and paying significantly higher salaries (management in corporations, human resource officers, sales, etc.).

 

Attempts to have school social work internships receive compensation in Illinois

 On February 10, 2024, IL SB 2222 was filed by Senator Laura Fine to amend the Board of Higher Education Act. When passed, it would require social workers in schools to be paid during internships. From my knowledge, I don’t think there are other policies that require the same for other types of social worker students, or if it is different for BSW, MSW, and other degree level social work students. As a social work student, I would like for policies to require all social work students to have paid internships. IL SB 2222 is a good first step toward achieving this.

The main reason I believe that paid internships for social work students would be good is to raise the quality of living for these students. Often, social work students have to live in literal poverty when interning since they do not have a source of income. This limits what they invest into their well-being, such as food, doctors appointments, hygiene, and other basic necessities. If a social worker’s wellbeing is being compromised because of their unpaid internship, then they are not likely to put their best effort into their internship. This can cause their “employers” to either 1) be less likely to hire these students after they graduate and/or 2) for the student to lose their passion and interest for social work. 

Also, the state has an insufficient supply of school social workers, so the financial incentive encouraging students to pursue a school social worker track and do an internship in a school social work setting will help address the difficulties school districts are having in hiring a sufficient number of qualified school social workers.

Internship employers are less likely to hire these students after they graduate because these students – as mentioned before – might not have been putting in the effort they could have if they had had the money to get the resources they needed to improve their quality of life. The low quality of life, along with the stress that comes with most if not all social work jobs, could increase the likelihood that students will lose their passion for the field. On top of an internship, social work students might also be taking classes. Many students feel pressured to complete their degree in a short time span if they are depending on scholarships or other time-limited financial aid that would prevent them from doing the internship separate from classes. Perhaps they want to get working in the field as soon as possible to start making money as soon as possible. Whatever the case, these students also are taking on more responsibility that lessens their quality of life during an unpaid internship. 

The other reason social work students should be paid during internships is because they are the future supporters of the people in need of help in our society. Why does society – specifically, the government – not lend a hand to social work students when they are invaluable to our society. Any social work higher education requires students to learn about social welfare policy, meaning that social work students will have acquired tools to advance their advocacy in these classes. These students need the time and energy to fully engage themselves in these courses for the knowledge in these courses to be truly beneficial for their careers. Without a good quality of life, they are unable to invest themselves in such a class.

There are many ways people, especially social work students, can advocate for paid internships for these students. A few months ago, I tagged along on the 2024 NASW-Illinois Chapter Advocacy Day, which is where social workers advocate for certain social work-related policies in bills. One of the policies that we advocated for was IL SB 2222, and I supposed it ended up being implemented! The idea of meeting our representatives, people who I deemed too powerful to talk to beforehand, was terrifying. However, after doing so, I learned that they are quite literally people that represent us, and we need to talk to them so they know what we want – or convince them that what we want is best.

So far, SB 2222 hasn’t been passed by a floor vote, so I think it’s still a proposed amendment. You could offer a slip in support of it, I suppose. I was hoping it would be passed, but it seems there will be no veto session, and that suggests it will have to be passed in the next General Assembly.  Unpaid internships are legal if the intern is working at a non-profit or charitable organization, or if the intern is working at a for-profit company but the primary benefit is to the intern rather than to the company. There are rules (a seven-point test) to determine if an intern is a primary beneficiary of their field placement or internship at a private for-profit company. I’m not sure about working for a government agency or non-profit, but the standards would be different.  There are grants already to help child protection agencies and schools pay stipends to students who do internships, but my understanding is that in Illinois it’s not easy for schools and agencies to get those grants (they are not large grants, not many are given out, and the application process is burdensome). 

Another law that NASW Illinois chapter supported, and was passed into law, was the one about awarding 53 scholarships to students aging out of state custody to pay for their higher education (IL SB 3138 now Public Act 103-0943.2024-08-09).

You can follow this bill at the General Assembly website, or scroll through the many bills supported or opposed by NASW-IL to see its status at the Bill Tracker webpage at the NASW-IL website.

I am in agreement with you that social work students who do internships at schools should not have to pay for their internships.  Ideally, social work students should not have to pay tuition for any of their internships, and they should receive minimum wage compensation for their work.  However, there may be practical problems in forcing this desirable situation upon all internship sites.  But, for internships at public schools or public agencies, including state agencies, public housing authorities, Area Agencies on Aging, and those sorts of public sector sites, I think the state has the ability and the resources to at least cover the cost of tuition for those internships, and ideally cover the tuition for the internships and also provide a stipend for the student, and perhaps a bonus for the social worker who is supervising the student in their field placement. All the justifications you gave in your reaction essay are good reasons why this should be done.