Eliminating the Field Internship Requirement in Social Work Education?

Recently, Social Justice Solutions published a blog post on “the importance of social work internships” which mentioned attempts to influence the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) to reduce its field placement requirements in its MSW accreditation standards. A petition drive is currently being conducted to eliminate the internship requirement for all BSW and “non-clinical” MSW students, both in the future and retroactively. According to this petition, these students “should have the opportunity to customize their degree based on need, work experience, and desired career path whether this means taking more technology, business, clinical or political sciences courses in lieu of more internship credit hours”.

What this proposal ignores is that the field placement, on either a BSW or MSW level, is more than simply an accumulation of credit hours, but rather an essential process of socialization into a profession that can have profound impact—even life and death—on individuals, families and communities. For example, I think here of the social worker involved in child welfare work—a field of social work that might be characterized by some as “non-clinical”. The professional responsibilities—protecting a child from severe abuse or neglect or evaluating a specious allegation of abuse which might lead to a child being removed from his family—here are immense. Such work requires not only academic study of child development and child welfare policy, but active mentoring in an agency milieu where one develops professional judgment and an ethical perspective in line with social work values.

Even “macro social work” involves similar considerations as the lives and livelihood of community members may be at stake. Also, many “macro” social work positions involve management responsibilities involving oversight of direct practice social workers; without experience “in the trenches”, how can such social work managers effectively discharge such responsibilities?

While certainly some social work students who eschew field internships will “customize” their education in a way that insures professional excellence, many others will simply see this as a shortcut to a professional degree and licensure. For example, in many states, anyone with a CSWE-approved MSW degree can qualify for licensure that enables them to enter private practice of psychotherapy, regardless of whether their MSW education was “clinical” or “non-clinical”. It is not difficult to imagine that some potential students will view a “non-clinical” MSW education without a field placement as a route that will enable them to enter private practice in half the time. And, frankly, the field internship sometimes identifies students with significant character deficits that should preclude them from professional social work practice of any kind.

Given these apparent problems of making the field internship in social work education an elective choice, one wonders why the Network for Social Work Management (NSWM) has given significant exposure to this radical proposal in its website and emails.

Instead of giving BSW and MSW students the options to eschew a field internship, the Council on Social Work Education, as noted in a recent Clinical Social Work Association report, needs to tighten its standards for field placements, requiring students to be placed an actual agencies and institutions, to be supervised in-person by a qualified MSW supervisor, and for social work schools and departments to actually visit, in-person, all agencies not in their immediate communities before student placement.

Update – 4:35 EST:

Lakeya Cherry from the Network for Social Work Management was kind enough to clarify their postion:

The Network for Social Work Management is part of a Tweet Chat collaborative where we openly discuss many topics and hot button issues. The Network does not accept our partners’ policies or positions as our own but do agree, that together, we will openly discuss issues that impact macro social work practice. This is paramount for bringing a voice to an often forgotten about aspect of our profession. You have mischaracterized that we support eliminating field internships, we have no official position, but we will continue to support this forum where our partners can talk freely about issues everyone should be debating. We hope you will join future Tweet chats to bring your opinion to the table and in the future, call us to accurately state our positions. Thank you.

Written by:
F. Douglas Stephenson, LCSW, LMFT, BCD
Former President, The Florida Society for Clinical Social Work

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21 Comments

  1. Lakeya Cherry April 10, 2014
    • Matthew Cohen, MSW Matthew Cohen, MSW April 10, 2014
      • Lakeya Cherry April 10, 2014
  2. William (BIll) S. Meyer April 10, 2014
    • Courtney Kidd LMSW April 11, 2014
  3. Judith Logue, PhD, ACSW April 11, 2014
  4. Erica Scarpulla April 11, 2014
  5. Courtney Kidd LMSW April 11, 2014
  6. Joel Kanter April 11, 2014
  7. Gary Holden April 11, 2014
    • Joel Kanter April 15, 2014
  8. Brianna April 11, 2014
  9. Robert Shorin, ACSW, BCD April 11, 2014
  10. Current MSW Student April 11, 2014
  11. Kelsey Di Pirro April 12, 2014
  12. Angela M. Oddone LCSW April 12, 2014
  13. lorraine gutierrez April 15, 2014
  14. Ashley, LMSW April 15, 2014
  15. gary holden April 15, 2014
  16. F. Douglas Stephenson,LCSW,LMFT,BCD April 24, 2014
  17. Clayton Sankey MSW, LICSW, BCD, Fellow of the Minnesota Society for Clinical Social Work June 7, 2014

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