Assistant Dean for Field Education University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas, United States
Overview: Students are eager for paid internships as a matter of practicality and economic justice. In addition, field-related funding allows more diverse students access to the social work profession. This presentation will share challenges, strategies, and successes in developing a field program that offers more than $1.1 million for internships annually.Proposal text: Paid academic internships in social work field education is not the norm, but they do happen.
Field-related funding is available to social work interns in work-based placements, through agency-provided stipends, and thanks to grants and foundation awards managed by social work departments and schools. The majority of social work internships do not offer funding and at the same time, students are increasingly raising questions about paid internships as a matter of economic justice and equitable access to social work as a diverse profession.
Academic internships come with pros and cons for students and agencies alike which raises questions about compensation in field. Thanks to university connections, social worker students benefit from internship opportunities in agencies they would not otherwise be able to access. Thanks to agency preparations and training, students reap the benefits of intensive agency investment before taking their newly developed skills and knowledge elsewhere within a semester or two.
Agencies get the benefit of additional personnel – if only temporarily – to multiply and augment service delivery while potentially developing workforce capacity. At the same time, they take on additional risk and liability in the process.
Excluding work-based placements, the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas has offered over $1.1 million annually in field-related funding through agency-funded stipends and program grants and awards since academic year 2019-20. This presentation will address the trends, pros, cons, and ethics of field-related funding, building on years of experience and information collected from a spring 2022 survey of CSWE field directors.
This workshop will share policies and procedures to increase field-related funding. For example, the Community Partnership Development Committee develops 40 new placements each year and establishes the norm that stipends are expected when possible. Challenges to funded internships abound of course, and the presentation will also address the importance of keeping field’s signature flexibility and adaptability as a part of the strategy.
Building a program that develops paid internships takes time, but there’s no time like the present to share strategies with each other and learn how to increase field-related funding.
