Social work students doing it tough: new study

The financial distress faced by social work students required to complete 120 hours of unpaid practicum or ‘field education’ as part of their degree has been revealed in a new study.

Led by social work expert Professor Liz Beddoe from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, the study shows that social work students join nursing, teaching and medical students as people vital to our society who are nevertheless struggling to make ends meet to complete their qualifications, says Professor Beddoe.

“However, unlike medical students, social work students, who’re likely to enter the workforce on lower wages and have lower lifetime earnings, have yet to receive attention or support, despite social work being an area of national skill shortage," she says.

Based in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, Professor Beddoe has led the first national study of social work students and recent graduates in Aotearoa New Zealand to explore the issue of financial hardship and its effect on student wellbeing, with results just published in Social Work Education: The International Journal.

“It shows the process of qualifying for the profession risks making those students as vulnerable as the people they hope to serve,” she says.

“We recognised the need for strong evidence to support what is known anecdotally across the profession about the impact of financial hardship on social work students.”

Hence her team’s online survey, completed by 346 social work students and recent graduates from across the country.

The survey found that most participants (84%) had engaged in paid work while studying and nearly all relied on multiple forms of financial support, including wages, student loans, student allowances and financial support from their families/whānau.

Nearly two thirds (63%) had a student loan, with debt ranging from $2,000 to $100,000; the mean loan debt was $31,777.

As many as 90 percent had experienced anxiety about their student loan debt and those with a student loan of any size reported lower mental wellbeing than those without.

Participants were asked a range of questions on the level of financial hardship they experienced. For example, had they skipped meals because of not being able to pay for food, had they used a foodbank or applied for a hardship grant to buy food or struggled to pay essential childcare costs?

A third had experienced moderate financial hardship, and nearly seven percent had experienced severe financial hardship, says Professor Beddoe.

“Financial hardship had serious impacts on students’ mental and social wellbeing; more than half had sought medical advice on their mental health during their studies, and mental wellbeing was significantly lower for those reporting moderate or severe hardship compared to those reporting low financial hardship.”

She says those who had experienced severe financial hardship also experienced poorer social wellbeing.

“They reported not having enough time to do important activities with partners, children, or friends, having to limit engagement with cultural, community or marae activities, and having to sacrifice participation in hobbies, arts and sports because of cost and time constraints.”

Participants who had caring responsibilities – for children, unwell parents or partners, or other family members – experienced more intense financial hardship than others in the study.

“Our study showed that mental well-being was significantly lower for students reporting severe or extreme financial hardship, and that working while studying, which is nearly impossible while doing full-time social work practicum placements, doesn’t alleviate the negative effects of financial stress on wellbeing.”

Professor Beddoe says that while taking on student loan debt might enable more people to engage in tertiary education, the study showed the greatest predictor of social wellbeing among social work students was student debt.

“Indebtedness creates additional pressures that affect student wellbeing. Students who are parents, or who have other caring responsibilities, were more vulnerable to financial struggles and tended to have lower social wellbeing. Given the gendered nature of the social work profession, this is a significant and concerning finding which especially disadvantages women.”

In a follow-up study, she says the team ran a further student survey in 2023 which will provide a comparison with the 2019 data and which repeated most of the questions and expanded on them to understand how Covid-19 affected students and recent graduates.

“The team are currently analysing the new data which covers paid work, living situations, caring responsibilities, impact of any financial hardship, impact on caregiving responsibilities, social wellbeing and participation, physical and mental health, and any impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on participants’ study.

The frustrating thing, she says, is solutions have already proposed in a 2022 briefing paper to the then-Minister for Social Development and Employment by the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW).

These included establishing a specific student placement payment before the start of the 2023 academic year to bring students’ minimum earnings up to the level of at least the minimum training wage.

The paper also recommended increasing or removing the lifetime student allowance cap for professions where there is a skill shortage, like social work, and making a student allowance available to students completing professional masters degree training.

Establishing financial support for organisations offering field work education placements was another suggestion.

“Those recommendations were ignored, at least in part, we believe, due to a lack of strong evidence,” says Professor Beddoe.

She says the study has “painted a disturbing picture” of the plight of students training to work with society’s most vulnerable people.

Social work students in Aotearoa New Zealand: the impacts of financial hardship on mental and social wellbeing by Allen Bartley, Liz Beddoe, Ladan Hashemi, Mehdi Rahimi and Sophia de Fossard (2024) is published in Social Work Education: The International Journal.