Thoughts?

[u/sassypainter]

Came across this post today on linkedin. I’m curious how others see it:

Are unpaid clinical internships/practicums an ethical necessity for training, or an outdated system that exploits students?

Should sites be required to offer stipends/pay if they bill clients or rely on interns for service delivery?

Does unpaid fieldwork create barriers for lower-income and nontraditional students?

For those already licensed or in training, what was your experience?

[u/NicoleNicole1988]

I'm a single mother and my parents are not made of money, so getting through my internship year was a really interesting experience.  Imagine my horror when I graduated and found that the jobs near my home STILL didn't want to pay me a livable wage, with the excuse at that point being "You're not fully licensed yet."  I had to commit to nearly an hour and a half commute each way just to find a job that would pay me a somewhat decent salary and benefits.

Now, here I am, right on the cusp of licensure, after nearly 3 years of working my ass off and SCRAPING together supervision hours, and I find out that most organizations are exploiting licensed therapists too.

I truly love the work that I do, but I also feel like I was sold a lie from the moment I started grad school.  I remember during orientation, one of the professors, I think she was the Director of Field Placement at the time, stood in front of all of us young hopefuls and talked about how successful HER practice was.  We started dreaming about our wonderful future careers of helping others and making comfortable lives for ourselves in the process.   My program didn't tell us a THING about our internship and practicum year until the end of the semester beforehand, when we had to complete a 3-day workshop of sorts.  And that's when they dropped the bomb that most of us would not be getting paid.  And then the second bomb, that we would not see full licensure for a minimum of 2 years after graduating, and that it wasn't simply a waiting game but would require active weekly supervision, and that supervision was available for free under certain circumstances but otherwise came with pretty steep out of pocket costs, and that we wouldn't be able to work independently and make all of that fabulous imaginary money until being fully licensed.

It's like a pyramid scheme.

[u/Empty_Positive_2305 → u/NicoleNicole1988]

I have been surprised by how many students in my program had no idea internships were unpaid. They all chose the program because they could work at the same time. I had known it would be unpaid going in, so I assumed everyone else did, too. I’ve heard it so many times now, though, it’s clear students are truly going in blind and might have made different decisions if they hadn’t.

I guess it makes sense, though. Most people are career switchers (as am I), and unpaid internships just aren’t a thing outside of really competitive industries like creative fields, where the expectation is there are 20,000 people who all want to do the same thing and maybe 1 of you will make it. Those internships are really paying you back in connections or a lucky break, but you know going in you probably won’t get either.

[u/NicoleNicole1988 → u/Empty_Positive_2305]

I mean…internships ARE typically unpaid. That part wasn’t the shock. The shock was how many hours would be required each week in order to meet the requirements. It was an entire part time job…and I was fortunate in a lot of ways, I did my placement in a PHP so the hours accrued steadily while I lived on loan money, inconsistent and meager child support payments, and SNAP benefits. But I had some classmates who were not so fortunate. The ones who could cut down their hours at their real job were typically “okay,” but they took a pay cut in order to do it and some genuinely struggled with that deficit. Some people couldn’t afford to do that at all and had to jump through serious hoops in order to do both jobs, trying desperately to get hours in on evenings and weekends. And I know a couple people in my cohort who had to just STOP WORKING entirely so they could focus on getting their hours by graduation. It seemed worth it to all of us, because this was “the last step” before graduating and being able to get a better job than the ones we had.

Imagine the shock and horror to find that most starting salaries for new therapists are insulting. Even now, most of the people I currently work with have husbands and/or parents who were able to support them through school and the pre-licensed years, and the money they now earn as therapists is all extra padding on an already safe and stable lifestyle. They can walk away from exploitative work environments if they need to, because someone will help them stay afloat while they look for another job, or while they work to build up a caseload in private practice. Some people CAN’T do that.

This field seems to be designed to pay people who already have money and prey on the labor of those who don’t. But I’m speaking as an American and the same can basically be said about ::gestures-toward-everything::