PAID PLACEMENTS AOTEAROA |

PAID PLACEMENTS AOTEAROA |

Campaigning for paid training in healthcare, education, and social work

Campaigning for paid training for student dignity, workforce diversity, and equitable access to quality healthcare, education, and social services.

INFORMATION

Paid Placement’s Mission

Paid training for accessible services and thriving communities.

Imagine an Aotearoa where you & your loved ones have readily available access to quality healthcare, mental health services, social support, & education. Diverse public services that reflect our communities’ needs; well-resourced professionals and choice for whānau in the support they receive. This dream relies on the Government prioritizing & funding workforce development so more people can enter these essential professions. We are calling on the government to pay students a universal stipend while they train in registered professions with compulsory placement requirements. This is non-repayable & should increase annually to reflect the year-on-year increase in placement hours, skill development, & responsibilities.

Our mission

If we are serious about sustainable workforce development, we must incentivise people to train domestically.

Paid training is not a pipedream. It’s a necessity if we want to grow – and keep - our workforce. Police pay their recruits for 20 weeks of training at Police college, while providing bed and board. Their workforce has grown 21% since 2017 and is the most diverse it’s ever been. The dropout rate from Police training over the last 5 years has averaged 1.5%.

Paid training in social services can be done because it is being done – and it works!

We hear the same old rhetoric that there’s no money but this is hard to accept when we hear our supermarkets and banks reporting record profits while our trainee workforce can’t afford food and rent. Something has gone fundamentally wrong and we have to fix it.

No funding. No workforce.

For too long this system has depended entirely on good will. No contractual obligations, no employment relationship, no remuneration. Just people’s desire to serve their communities and a willingness to ‘suffer for their art.’ But people’s good will is running out. We see this in the dropout rates and immigration to Australia.

Sustainable workforce

If we want sustainable workforce development we have to prioritise and fund domestic training. Placement poverty is a significant contributor to dropouts. By removing this barrier we increase the number of people who complete their training. Our future workforce deserve to live with dignity whilst they train. We need them!

Paid training will make registered professions more accessible to diverse demographics, including Māori, Pasifika, and mature students – people who already have roots here and are more likely to stay.

We know that a representative workforce leads to better health outcomes for people because they are more likely to seek and engage in treatment if they trust, and feel understood by, their clinician. It is in our interests to increase diversity in the workforce.

Plus, it will improve access to services by reducing waitlists and wait times. It will also mean greater diversity of services on offer to best meet the needs of our whānau and communities.

Paid training is a win for all

These highly skilled, highly qualified professionals take years to train. If we are going to address the existing workforce shortages, we must act now!

We can provide students with a universal, non-repayable, annually increasing stipend

SOLUTION

What can we do about it?

  • We are calling on the government to pay students a universal stipend while they train in registered professions with compulsory placement requirements. This is non-repayable & should increase annually to reflect the year-on-year increase in placement hours, skill development, & responsibilities. First year undergraduate programs with placement requirements must start on at least equivalent to the training wage for Aotearoa New Zealand. Postgraduate students should start on at least equivalent to the living wage to reflect their existing qualifications & professional experience. This fund would be paid via StudyLink as a non-repayable student allowance.

  • A stipend is not a wage. It is a tax-free fund to support students to cover living costs, enabling them to fully engage with their studies & placement requirements. A stipend does not make students employees. It will not affect training, practice, or supervision requirements.

    Year 1: Training wage - $616.51/week* Year 2: Minimum wage - $767.61/week* Year 3+: Living wage - $845.59/week*

    *Take home amount students would receive at the current rates as of 1 April 2024. These should be reviewed & adjusted annually in line with equivalent wage rates. Additional allowances should be available for on-call requirements, mandatory therapy, & supervision costs.

THE CHALLENGE

Chronic workforce shortages.

It’s no secret that New Zealand is dealing with chronic workforce shortages in its frontline essential services. Covid-19 highlighted and exacerbated existing cracks in the system and the cost-of-living crisis has brough the issue of unpaid training to ahead.

Unpaid placements are common in practical, patient, or client-facing professions. Nursing (1100 hours), midwifery (2400 hours), medicine (3yrs!), teaching (80-120 days), social work (960 hours), and mental health professions (500-1500 hours) to name a few.

In healthcare alone, there are 21,000 students undertaking approximately 11.6 million hours of unpaid training each year. This doesn’t include teaching, mental health, veterinary, social work and other programs with placements.

StudyLink typically lends people $316/week. This can increase or decrease depending on different criteria but it’s still not enough to live on. For context as to just how little this is, a 40/hr week at minimum wage would pay $926 ($767 after tax). We effectively expect people to live on less than half the minimum wage while they train in professions with chronic staff shortages.

StudyLink assumes that students will undertake paid work to top up their income but for students in training, unpaid placements actively restrict their capacity to undertake paid work. For every hour they are on placement, they are losing an hour of potential income. On-call requirements further restrict students’ capacity to undertake paid work. Without any compensation for their time, students end up living in placement poverty.

Placement poverty is a specific form of financial hardship that students experience as a result of unpaid placement requirements. Not only do students have to train for free but there are additional costs involved with undertaking these programs too. Immunisations, uniforms, hospital parking, travel expenses, childcare arrangements, supervision and therapy (mental health professionals), and secondary accommodation for placements away from home.

An annual $1000 course related costs loan is a droplet in the bucket. $316/week will barely cover rent, food, and bills – especially for those with whānau to support. Between unpaid placements, ongoing study commitments, and the necessity to undertake paid work on top – students often report working 80-hour weeks to make ends meet. We are burning them out before they even begin.

We see this in the dropout rates of up to 37% for nursing, 42% for midwifery, and 45% for social work. Those who do make it through 3-6 years of training are riddled with student loans and living cost debt. They are incentivised to move overseas for better pay and conditions. And who can blame them? NZ’s training system is gruelling and the salaries don’t justify taking on that much stress and debt.

Meanwhile, the government is inviting overseas professionals to move here but with a global shortage of healthcare workers, teachers, and other essential services, this is not a long-term solution. Those who do move here tend to stay temporarily, gain the relevant qualifications, and join the mass exodus to Australia.

The future should not come at the cost of the present.

We are short STEM and te reo Māori teachers, 700 social workers, 1000 psychologists, 1,050 midwives, 1,700 doctors, & 4,800 nurses to name a few. Our hospitals, GP practices, schools, mental health & social services are more stretched than ever. Dangerously low staffing levels & overworked professionals make for burnt-out workforces & inaccessible services.

This means long waitlists for surgeries or specialist appointments & long wait times in ED. Delayed access to mental health assessments, treatment, crisis support, & suicide prevention. Family harm & child protection services stretched beyond capacity. Large class sizes in schools mean reduced capacity for individual learning needs to be met & homeschooling for parents when teachers are off sick. The ripple effect of workforce shortages is massive.

More staff are needed but it’s nearly impossible to complete course requirements with the current cost of living. Students are burning out & dropping out of study at rates of up to 45%. They can’t afford to work for free when rent, food, & power still cost money.

INFO

  • Students training in professions with placement requirements complete between 500 & 2400 hours of unpaid training depending on registration requirements. Medical students complete 20-42 weeks of unpaid placements for 3 years (after a 3yr BSc Health Science).

  • Students are often required to live or work away from home to complete placements. The cost of double rent & the impact on part-time work opportunities are significant. For students with on-call requirements, maintaining paid work is almost impossible.

  • Students must cover course related costs such as textbooks, uniforms, immunisations, equipment, travel, parking, supervision, & childcare arrangements. $1000 course costs loans are insufficient to cover these expenses.

    Students participate in paid work to pay their bills on top of unpaid placements, often working up to 80 hours a week to make ends meet.

  • Students from backgrounds of hardship or those caring for tamariki/whānau get excluded from these professions as they have limited financial flexibility or capacity to take on high student loans, unpaid labour & course related costs.

  • Student hardship disproportionately affects Māori & Pasifika because of existing inequities in Aotearoa New Zealand. We need greater diversity & experience to better serve the needs of our communities but without financial support to study our professions are at risk of becoming more short-staffed & less diverse.

RESOURCES