Abolish unpaid social work internships, says petition launched by New Brunswick student [video]

A graduate student in New Brunswick is calling for an end to unpaid internships, saying it’s a form of exploitation that reflects the devaluation of essential care-sector jobs in a field staffed mostly by women. 

Julia Strang is currently working on a Master of Social Work degree in a program that includes an unpaid internship. She recently launched a petition demanding an end to the practice, and it had gathered more than 430 names by Monday. 

She previously worked two other unpaid internships while completing a Bachelor of Social Work degree.

That kind of field placement is an important learning experience, she said, but it can also be burdensome, especially for students who are already working their way through university. At the Master’s level in particular, she said, the work comes with a lot of responsibility.

“The unpaid portion makes it so hard for people to get by, to balance working, studying in the evenings, and then doing this placement,” she said.

Some students who work their way through university have to take time off from paid jobs, resulting in a higher debt load, said Strang. Her internship “is throughout the entire school year and it’s a couple of days a week.” 

She declined to identify her employer or her university, saying she wanted to draw attention to the systemic issue, rather than call out a specific institution.  

In the petition, she describes unpaid internships in social work as “exploitative and inconsistent with the standards of internships in other fields.” 

The petition continues: “Expecting students to volunteer for what quickly becomes a full caseload, with the same expectations as paid employees, is unethical. It sets a precedent that devalues their work and prepares students to accept such treatment in their professional careers.” 

Strang also noted a starkly gendered dimension in social work, a field where women constitute the vast majority of workers. In contrast, majority-male fields like the skilled trades often involve paid work placements.

“I think it’s very revealing,” she said. “We kind of just expect women to accept this and just take it on the chin.” She added that the practice likely keeps students from lower-income backgrounds from pursuing social work. “Maybe this is a deal breaker for them.”

She’s not alone in questioning unpaid labour performed by students in the field of social work. The heads of two national organizations told the NB Media Co-op the practice is being reevaluated. 

Carole Carpot, executive director of the Canadian Association of Social Work Education, which provides accreditation for social work programs in Canada, has seen how students struggle.

“Students are really sometimes put in difficult situations,” she said. “For students coming from equity-deserving groups, for example, it adds to the many barriers that they might face to access education.”

Carpot said the question remains: who will pay for the practicums amid ongoing conditions of austerity in universities and the agencies that employ social workers? 

“Social work faculties in the country are under dire financial stress at the moment,” she said, noting that many are on a hiring freeze. And while some paid internships exist in social work, funding isn’t widely available. 

“I know that some universities right now are also turning towards bursary or specific co-op programs, and those are connected to federal funding,” Carpot said.

She described the uncertainty and stress that students face, recalling her own experiences. 

“I went back to education and to a MSW [Master of Social Work program] later in life with two younger children, having to do a practicum and having to work as well,” she said. 

“The impact on mental health, well-being, anxiety that it creates — it truly is, speaking from a very personal perspective, something that I will never forget.”

The Canadian Association of Social Workers, which represents some 20,500 social workers, is looking into the matter of compensation for interns, but the group doesn’t currently have a policy position on the matter, according to executive director Fred Phelps.

In an interview, Phelps said the professional association may advocate for a new financial resource similar to the Canada Summer Jobs wage subsidy program, to avoid putting more financial pressure on the various organizations that employ social workers. 

“Our advocacy, I think, would be centred around creating a new federal funding source to support agencies and students, to apply to cover the costs of practicum wages,” he said. 

He noted international precedent: a new program in Australia called the Commonwealth Prac Payment provides funding for mandatory work placements in care sector fields largely staffed by women, such as midwifery, nursing, teaching, and social work. 

Federal and provincial government spokespeople didn’t respond to queries from the NB Media Co-op by publication time.

Three schools of social work exist at degree-granting institutions in New Brunswick, namely St. Thomas University, the University of New Brunswick, and l’Université de Moncton. The NB Media Co-op reached out to all three institutions for this story.

L’Université de Moncton provided a statement from Chantal H. Bourassa and Isabel Lanteigne — director and deputy director of the School of Social Work, respectively — expressing support for the creation of a government-funded bursary program.

“The School of Social Work at l’Université de Moncton recognizes the financial burden that tuition fees and the cost of living represent for students,” said the statement, in English translation. “It therefore supports the establishment of a government bursary program for those who undertake a social work internship.”

The statement continued: “Such a program would provide financial support to interns without transferring responsibility for their remuneration to internship organizations. It would also ensure that internship choices are motivated by learning opportunities rather than financial considerations. In this way, it would preserve the educational vocation of internships, by maintaining the emphasis on skills acquisition rather than on performance in the workplace.”

The statement from l’Université de Moncton underlined that internships should be regarded as learning experiences, citing accreditation standards. 

“Students must not take on the workload of a paid employee,” Bourassa and Lanteigne said. “Internship settings must put in place the necessary conditions to allow interns to achieve learning objectives, at their own pace.”

This article was updated to include a statement from l’Université de Moncton at 1:35 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. 

Ryan Hillier is a writer and settler living on the banks of the Petkootkweăk. David Gordon Koch is a staff reporter with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS).