Rutgers P4P Advocates for Reimbursement, Compensation for Mandatory Social Work Internships

The Daily Targum • By Arishita Gupta • March 27, 2024

“Payments for Placements (P4P) is a nationwide student-led union advocating for students in the field of social work to be fairly compensated for completing internships that are required for them to graduate.

The Daily Targum recently met with members of the Rutgers P4P chapter to discuss the purpose of placements, the challenges social work students face in being paid for completing them and the implications the current placement system has for their mental and physical well-being.

Claire Thompson, a Rutgers School of Social Work graduate student, said during their undergraduate senior year and graduate schooling, social work students must complete extensive hours of unpaid labor, often at agencies outside of the University.

They must work 400 hours by the end of their undergraduate senior year, 15 hours per week during their first year of graduate school and 22.5 hours per week during their second year.

This workload is exacerbated at Rutgers, where Thompson said students must complete 1,125 hours of work to qualify for the social work licensing exam, which is 225 hours more than the average national requirement.”

Read more….