The Real World — Surviving Social Work Field Placements
By David Surface
Social Work Today
Vol. 5, No. 1, Page 23

MSW students embarking on their first field placement face a variety of challenging questions. What are my professional goals and what skills do I need to achieve them? How can I be sure that the agency where I’m placed will provide me with what I need?

How much input a student has in selecting the site of his or her first field placement depends on the school’s policy. Miriam S. Raskin, BA, MSW, EdD, at George Mason University department of social work, explains its process for placing MSW students.

“First-year MSW students do a generalist practice practicum,” says Raskin. “They’re assigned a placement based on interest, previous work, and volunteer experience. Generally they are placed in areas where they have not worked to expand their knowledge and skills to include individuals, groups, communities, and families.”

At the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University, MSW students are allowed to choose their own field education site. Estelle Rochman, MSW, LCSW, director of field education, admits that allowing MSW students to make their own field placements is not the typical approach.

“We’re very atypical, actually,” says Rochman. “We don’t place our students—all our students choose their own practicum. Of course, they must choose it within certain boundaries and we give them many guidelines and much preparation, but they really make the final decision.”

According to Edwin Gonzalez-Santin, MSW, who chairs the Council on Field Education for the Council on Social Work Education and teaches at Arizona State University School of Social Work, the placement of BSW and MSW students in field practicum is a collaborative process among the field office, faculty, and students.

“Students complete a form expressing their preferred field, such as mental health or child welfare,” says Gonzalez-Santin. “Then they make a subcategory of ages they think they’d like to work with—seniors, young kids, teenagers. For example, in placing students in tribal or urban American Indian agencies, once the director of field placement compiles a list of students, we meet with the student to discuss what the agency has to offer. We give the students a first and second choice, and sometimes a third choice to interview. It isn’t just assigned—we look at the student’s experience and what they want to accomplish.”

While every effort is usually made to accommodate students’ preferences, Elizabeth H. Voshel, MSW, CSW, ACSW, coordinator of field education at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, reminds students to be realistic with their requests. “When I interview students, I sometimes have to tell them that the agency they’ve requested won’t take them because they don’t have enough life or work experience.”

What To Look for in a Placement
Advisors agree that MSW students ought to use the process of evaluating potential practicum sites as an opportunity for self-examination.

“I tell students that they should give serious consideration to what they’re bringing to this practicum,” says Rochman. “Think about what you’ve done in your education and employment—what skills do you have from that? What populations do you like to work with? What are your professional goals? What kind of experiences do you want to involve yourself in?”

Rochman advises students to use a variety of resources to help focus their efforts at self-evaluation. “Consult with experts in the field, your academic advisors, your concentration coordinators about what kind of skills you need to add to your repertoire to meet your goals. What areas do you need to improve?”

Raskin agrees that students should do more than simply identify and use the skills they already have—they should also use the practicum experience as an opportunity to stretch and grow. “Students should focus on doing something new in order to expand their skills and marketability,” says Raskin. “Education is not just more of the same—it’s supposed to expand your horizons, create new ways of thinking, and move the student to a higher level of professionalism.”

Voshel believes that one of the most important skills students should develop during their practicum is the ability to assess. “Even if you’re going to be a macrolevel social worker, such as a social policy person or a community organization person, your ability to assess a community problem or an agency issue is important across the board. You need to identify what the problems are and develop a plan of action.”

Voshel agrees that students should reach beyond what they know. “I tell students, ‘Pick something you know nothing about and learn about it—you need to get some breadth and depth to your resume, and you’re not going to get that working with just one population.’ I had a student who’d always worked with kids. We placed her in the only opening we had left, which was the geriatric assessment clinic, and she was very nervous and leery about working with seniors. Then she came back to me in a month and said, You have opened my eyes—this is my career now.’ She tried it and liked it. But it doesn’t always work out that way.”

According to Gonzalez-Santin, in addition to evaluating one’s own skills and setting professional goals, MSW students sometimes find themselves questioning their relationship with the social work profession. This is a necessary and positive part of the process.

“When students first enter the profession and begin their placement process, they should be doing their own values homework,” says Gonzalez-Santin. “You’re going to encounter people who are different than yourself, situations that may be different from how you’ve been taught or reared. You need to take a look at that and start doing that initial work on yourself. ‘Is this the profession for me? Do I realize the values it promotes and are they consonant with my own values?’”

While self-examination and personal growth may be an important part of the first field placement experience, Voshel cautions students to not cross the line and forget their role as professionals. “Students must realize that through their field placement, they should not and will not make themselves better by virtue of their experience with their clients. If you have a recovering student with alcohol or substance problems, they may want to be placed in a substance abuse treatment unit—that’s probably not a good idea because they may be looking at that placement as an opportunity for self-help.”

Changing Your Mind — Part of the Process
No matter how much research and self-evaluation students do to prepare for their field placement, there is obviously no substitute for experience, which is why many students discover that they are not suited for the situations and populations they originally wanted to work with. Again, Gonzalez-Santin encourages students not to think of this change in selection of a field experience as a failure but as part of the professional growth process.
“I had a student who’d worked with elders before and was now working with young kids of 5 to 13 or so,” says Gonzalez-Santin. “That population was very difficult for her. We wanted her to have an experience different from working with elders, so we placed her at another agency that was working with older kids, teenagers up to 18 or 19, and that clicked for her.”

Voshel sums up the positive aspect of students changing their minds about their professional direction during their field placement. “It’s a good use of the practicum—it’s better to find out during your practicum than on a job.”

Employment-based Practicums
MSW students who are already employed sometimes ask their school to let them do their practicum at their current jobs. This practice, known as employment-based practicum, is permitted but is usually under strict conditions.

“We allow employment-based placements not as a routine matter but as an exception,” says Raskin. “We follow CSWE accreditation standards and require that students have a different supervisor than the one they have as an employee and that they work in a different service in their agency. Their new supervisor also must have an MSW and two years post-MSW experience.”

MSW students at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work are also allowed to do employment-based practicum, but under similar conditions. Rochman explains the rationale behind requiring students to work with a different supervisor and in a different area within their place of employment.

“Students everywhere expend a lot of effort and time and energy and money for this practicum experience, so we encourage them to use it to expand their skills and knowledge, to challenge themselves—and they can’t do that if they’re doing the same thing that they’ve done for the past 10 years. We also want them to work with a different supervisor so that there’s a guarantee that they’ll be evaluated as learners rather than as employees,” she says.

Choosing the Right Site
How can MSW students determine whether a certain agency is the right place for them to be?

“Students need to look at the agency’s ability to provide graduate-level experiences,” says Rochman. “Frankly, some prospective field instructors just don’t understand that sitting a student at a table all day and asking him to file or answer the phone all day is not graduate-level experience—that’s one of the things we monitor for.”

Gonzalez-Santin encourages MSW students to strive for a comprehensive understanding of an agency’s inner workings and respect its culture. What are its protocols and how do you fit within that? “All MSW students are hosted by an agency,” he says, “just like when you have people enter your home and you expect them to abide by your rules. So that’s important—getting used to that agency, its philosophy, and mission. So you must go in having looked at your own value system.”

When Problems Arise — Students and Field Instructors
Perhaps no part of the practicum experience is more important than the relationship between the student and the field instructor.

“We suggest that students pay close attention to a good match between themselves and the field instructor,” says Rochman. “It’s important that the field instructor meet the student’s learning needs in terms of activities and supervision and that the student’s learning style meet the instructor’s teaching style because very often that’s where things go a little nuts.”

“Over the years, I’ve seen many problems between students and the field instructors,” says Raskin. “For instance, blurring of boundaries by either the student or field instructor, sexual harassment, students who thought they knew more than the supervisor, field instructors who were overprotective and wouldn’t let the student experiment or take a risk, students who were caught in the middle of office politics and field instructors who tried to get students on one side or the other, field instructors who tried to place their moral or religious values on the student, stalking, physical aggressiveness, romantic relationships.”

Voshel stresses that students and field instructors alike need to be aware of the fact that they are required to understand and abide by the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics during a student’s field experience. “The development of professional boundaries between clients and colleagues is one of the cornerstones of social work education,” she says.

For Rochman, one of the most significant problems in the student-field instructor relationship is the lack of qualitative supervision.

“We and CSWE mandate a minimum of one hour face-to-face supervision a week,” says Rochman. “But sometimes field instructors just get bogged down with work. Everybody is shorter staffed and working longer hours, and sometimes supervision goes by the wayside. We like to see the student and the supervisor carve out an hour a week where they close the door, don’t answer the phone, and that’s their time. But sometimes it doesn’t happen and the student is shortchanged.”

If the student isn’t getting what he or she needs from his or her field instructor, sometimes the school can step in and offer guidance. “Maybe it’s a matter of field instructors being new, and despite all the training we do, they may not be sure of their role,” says Rochman. “That’s the kind of thing where we can sit down and talk with the field instructor, offer some education, and make it work.”

Students as “Free Labor”
Gonzalez-Santin explains how MSW students’ field placement experience can be affected by funding cuts at social service agencies. “These agencies are trying to get more unit counts, see more people so they can maintain their funding level—so some agencies are using students like little machines, trying to see as many clients as possible,” says Gonzalez-Santin. “I let the students and agencies know that they’re here to have an educational experience. They’re here to do, but they’re also here to learn. If you’re just doing and no one’s reflecting, then it’s not an educational experience.”

Schools often do their best to screen out agencies that rely on the “students-as-free-labor” tactic. “We do a site visit with every new agency because we want to make sure they can run the agency without students,” says Rochman. “It’s always a tip-off when an agency calls and says, ‘We’d really like to have a practicum student—our work has just escalated and we don’t have enough staff to handle everything. We could really ‘use’—that’s the word—use some students. That’s when your antennae goes up.”

What is the best way for MSW students to avoid being relegated to menial tasks at their field agency?

“The first line of defense is to discuss the activities during the interview before you even accept the practicum,” advises Rochman. “We give students a ton of questions to ask during an interview. What do you expect of students? What are our activities? Who will I work with?”

But sometimes, once the practicum starts, the student finds that the job isn’t exactly as it was described during the interview. What then?

“I caution students to try and work it out with the field instructor, to sit down during one of the supervisions and state a concern,” says Rochman. “If that doesn’t work, then to bring it to us and bring it to their advisor, and then one of us will have a discussion with the field instructor.”

Gonzalez-Santin points out that students themselves often help to bring about situations in which they are inappropriately used by the agency. “Students sometimes choose an agency that is not well-organized because they believe that they are going to get a lot of experience. They feel that they’ll have greater opportunities to work in a variety of areas, then they find that they’re in way over their heads. It’s that whole issue of being a jack of all trades and a master of none. I always tell them, ‘You came here to be a master of social work, so you must remain focused in order to maximize the benefits of your field education.”

When To Cut Your Losses
So what happens when, despite the student’s best research and best efforts at resolving conflicts with the agency, things do not improve? Once again, Rochman advises that the key is to have a formal process in place and to not wait until it’s too late.

“If the student and field advisor have problems they can’t resolve, we ask them to complete a termination form that we use to assess the situation and determine if the problem can be repaired. The whole idea is to help make the break professionally so that no one gets to the boiling point, walks in on Wednesday morning, and says, ‘OK, I’m out of here.’ Instead, we say talk to each other about it. And if you can’t work it out yourselves, then get us involved. You don’t have to suffer through this,” Rochman says.

At the University of Michigan, Voshel says that if a placement is broken, there is an open discussion with the student, the field instructor, the student’s advisor, and the field liaison. “We need to ensure that there is an open, candid discussion about learning objectives and opportunities that is reality-based,” says Voshel.

Gonzalez-Santin reminds both students and field instructors that there is another important factor to consider. “If you have a system that works well, your students will have a good experience. But most importantly, your clients’ experience will be positively affected—and it’s our clients’ experience that should be in our minds at all times.”

— David Surface is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY.

Navigating the Gray Areas — Ethical Concerns in Field Placement

Social Work Today spoke with Frederic G. Reamer, PhD, ethics expert and professor in the graduate program of the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College, about ethical issues encountered by students during their first field placement.

SWT: Are the kind of ethical questions students face in their first field internships more or less the same as the ones they’ll face later in their professional lives, or is there anything that distinguishes them?

Reamer: To the extent that we’re providing them with realistic field placements, the kinds of ethical problems students encounter in their field placements will be the same as the ones they encounter later in their careers. They may be seeing them for the first time, whereas other practitioners may be seeing them for the umpteenth time.

They may also encounter issues regarding dual relationships and boundaries or conflicts of interest. Take a student who is struggling with some personal issues in the middle of the academic program and raises those issues with her field instructor who happens to be a very skilled clinician—that may introduce a challenge for both parties. The instructor may have to say, ‘OK, this is not therapy, we’re not doing counseling here. I’m your field instructor, you’re the student, so we have to set limits here.’ So there are some unique issues that may surface because of this student-field instructor role that you wouldn’t find in a regular job with a regular employee.

SWT: Are there ethical dilemmas that are not immediately recognized as such by students?

Reamer: A very significant percentage of ethical dilemmas are not so obvious. I think we sometimes spend too much time focusing on the obvious and not enough time focusing on the subtle. So I spend most of my time talking about the shades of gray as opposed to the black-and-white ethical issues and [trying] to enhance students’ ability to recognize when there’s an ethical issue staring them in the face and the steps they can take to handle that constructively.

— DS