End the Exploitation of Social Work Student Interns!

ABSTRACT

As an exploitative practice institutionalized within social work education, field education is a problem for social work ethics. Unpaid internships are exploitative practices that produce a double bind of exploitation between agency and university. Social workers should oppose exploitation of student interns. Social workers should: (a) advocate for the Department of Labor to clearly define the role of internship field education as a site of labor, (b) advocate for the Council on Social Work Education to explicitly require that social work field education is a paid position, and (c) advocate for greater public funding for social service agencies and social work students. As concrete social action, social workers should organize and participate in the movement against unpaid internships.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paddy Farr

Paddy Farr, LCSW, is an Independent Researcher.