Report estimates cost of payments for social work placements

Compensating Australian students for their compulsory practicums could cost almost A$100 million (£52 million) a year in social work alone, reflecting the scale of investment needed to address “placement poverty” in all fields.

A report recommends that the government set aside A$91 million to pay the equivalent of the minimum wage to up to 7,000 social work students for the 500 hours of unpaid work required of each of them each year.

In a study commissioned by the Australian Council of Heads of Social Work Education (ACHSWE), the thinktank Per Capita finds that an “earn as you learn” stipend would be the optimum way of recompensing students on placement. It would be equitable and “legislatively simple”, offering workplace protections to both domestic and international students while avoiding the “expectation of an ongoing paid position”.

The analysis considered alternative approaches akin to trade apprenticeships and Australia’s paid parental leave scheme. While both would cost less than stipends, the former would be administratively cumbersome, the latter would need to be means-tested and neither would be available to international students.

Per Capita also considered whether unpaid placements could simply be banned, but concluded that this would be unworkable.

Compulsory placements magnify the cost-of-living pressures confronting many Australian students, forcing some to take leave or quit paid jobs and saddling them with extra travel and often accommodation costs.

An ACHSWE survey of more than 700 social work students found that placements had cost most of them the bulk of their earnings, with one in three losing all of their regular wages. “Some students reported losing tens of thousands of dollars…while 96 per cent said they didn’t have money for food, medications or other necessities including rent,” said Christine Morley, head of social work at Queensland University of Technology.

She said the “hidden” costs of placements included petrol, transport fares and A$100-a-week parking fees. “Students are…choosing between petrol and food, disconnecting their phones [or] internet, maxing out their credit cards. People put their placements off to last, [hoping] that somehow they’ll afford it. Often they don’t and have to discontinue.”

Professor Morley said completion rates in social work were around 15 percentage points lower than the average across all disciplines, with only around 56 per cent of social work undergraduates completing their ostensibly four-year degrees within nine years. “They’re not finishing. That’s directly implicated in workforce shortages, and…those shortages are only predicted to worsen,” she said.

The Per Capita report was due to be launched on 27 March during a parliamentary breakfast hosted by independent senator David Pocock. It coincides with speculation that the May budget will include placement poverty alleviation measures.

The Universities Accord recommended that the federal government work with universities and employers to introduce payment for placements. It advocated government financial support for placements in the nursing, care and teaching disciplines.

While practicum requirements vary by field and sometimes by jurisdiction, social work degrees require 1,000 hours of unpaid placement at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Requirements typically run to about 1,000 hours in clinical psychology, 800 hours in nursing, 700 hours in midwifery and 640 hours in teaching. Clinical placements for latter-year medical students range from two days a week to full-time blocks of 12 weeks.

Payments for placements in all these fields would be extremely expensive, with around 50,000 education students and 100,000 health students beginning degrees each year.

A pre-Covid study by Universities Australia tallied around 240,000 placements each year. While some are elective and some are paid, stipends of the type recommended in the Per Capita report could cost close to A$3 billion annually.

And while these costs could be shared with employers, including the state government employers of most teachers and health workers, Professor Morley said this would be impractical in social work, where employers were often cash-strapped community organisations. “If placements had to be funded by industry, then those placements would cease to exist,” she said.

She said authorities could reduce the costs of stipends by implementing some pre-existing ACHSWE recommendations. They included reducing the social work practicum requirement from 1,000 to 800 hours and letting students’ paid social work jobs count towards those hours – something that is not permitted at present.

“It is absolutely vital that we don’t just scrap placements because…they’re too expensive,” Professor Morley said. “We…need to prepare professional practitioners for the work that they’re going to be doing. But we need to find a balance where the requirements match the learning that’s needed, without burning out our students…or forcing them to drop out.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com