Filling Staff Shortages with Unpaid Interns in Slovenia

This time on Dragoness's Rants: unpaid internship for Slovenian social work students. As this post is particularly important for our country, the Slovenian version follows.

I am a third year student at the Faculty of Social Work (FSD). Practically from the first day at the faculty, I knew that social work was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

We have a very well organised internship system at our faculty: in the first year every student has to do one hundred hours of internship and forty hours of compulsory humanitarian work spread over the whole academic year, and the same system is in place in the second year. In the third and fourth years, the Faculty of Social Work follows a four-plus-one system (four years of undergraduate studies and one of Masters studies), we have one hundred and sixty hours of cumulative practice. You can imagine that in these five years - many students choose to do a Master's degree as it makes us much more employable - we get a lot of practical knowledge and do a lot of humanitarian work, because we are always working volunteers, our internships are unpaid. We often do emotionally very demanding jobs in our first year already, we work as interns in various organisations from social work centres, homes for elderly people, day-care centres and crisis centres to organisations that help children learn and centres people facing addictions, etc., but somehow I feel that our contribution to society is not sufficiently valued.

This pattern is repeated in workplaces. Not only do graduate social workers do things that secretaries could do, but on top of all the bureaucracy that limits our time to work with people, we are - at least in my opinion - far underpaid. Anyone who works as a social worker knows that it is an extremely responsible and demanding job. And the fact that a master's degree social worker in a home for the elderly, where a person that is immobile pays around EUR 1 700 a month (for care, food, accomodation etc.), is paid only EUR 1 100 net, seems bizarre to me, especially when we look at the work she does: bureaucracy (there is a lot of it), emotional support for residents and their relatives, running team meetings, admissions to the home, arranging the paperwork for admissions, and so on.

The state needs to stop relying on social workers being altruistic enough to do the job for such low wages until we burn out. It must also stop compensating for staff shortages (especially in social work centres) with unpaid interns. It is not that we are asking for fair pay for the work we do, and we do not expect it: what we want is to be paid something so that we at least know that the state recognises our work.

In še v slovenščini:

Sem študentka tretjega letnika Fakultete za socialno delo (v nadaljevanju FSD). Praktično od prvega dne na tej fakulteti sem vedela, da je socialno delo nekaj, kar želim početi do konca življenja.

Na naši fakulteti imamo zelo dobro urejen sistem prakse: že v prvem letniku vsaka študentka in študent opravita sto ur prakse in štirideset ur obveznega humanitarnega dela, razporejenega čez celo študijsko leto, enak sistem je tudi v drugem letniku. V tretjem in četrtem, FSD se namreč ravna po sistemu štiri plus ena (štiri leta dodiplomskega in eno magistrskega študija), pa imamo po sto šestdeset ur strnjene prakse. Lahko si predstavljate, da v teh petih letih – veliko študentov izbere še magistrski študij, saj smo tako še veliko lažje zaposljivi – dobimo veliko praktičnega znanja in opravimo ogromno humanitarnega dela, vedno namreč delujemo kot prostovoljci, naša praksa je neplačana. Pogosto opravljamo čustveno izredno zahtevna dela že v prvem letniku, kot praktikanti delamo v raznih organizacijah od centrov za socialno delo, domov za stare ljudi, varstveno delovnih centrov in kriznih centrov do organizacij za učno pomoč otrokom ter pomoč ljudem, ki se soočajo z odvisnostmi itd., nekako pa se mi zdi, da naš prispevek k družbi ni dovolj cenjen.

Ta vzorec se ponavlja na delovnih mestih. Ne le, da magistrirane socialne delavke in delavci delajo stvari, ki bi jih lahko tudi tajnice in tajniki, pač pa smo poleg vse birokracije, ki nam omejuje čas za delo z ljudmi – vsaj po mojem mnenju – veliko premalo plačani. Vsak, ki opravlja poklic socialne delavke ali delavca, ve, da je to izredno odgovorno in naporno delo. In dejstvo, da je magistrirana socialna delavka v domu za stare, kjer nepokreten človek plačuje okoli tisoč sedemsto evrov na mesec, plačana le tisoč sto evrov neto, se mi zdi bizarno, sploh če pregledamo dela, ki jih opravlja: birokracija (te je ogromno), čustvena opora stanovalcem in njihovim svojcem, vodenje timskih sestankov, sprejemi v dom, urejanje papirjev za sprejeme in drugo.

Država se mora nehati zanašati na to, da smo socialne delavke in delavci dovolj altruistični, da bomo delo opravljali za tako nizke plače dokler ne bomo izgoreli. Prav tako mora nehati kompenzirati pomanjkanje kadra (predvsem v centrih za socialno delo) z neplačanimi praktikanti. Ne gre se za to, da bi zahtevali pravično plačilo za opravljeno delo in tega niti ne pričakujemo: želimo pa, da bi dobili vsaj neko minimalno nagrado in tako vsaj vedeli, da država prepozna naše delo.