Transformative Social Work Field Education in Pivotal Times

Social work field education in Australia is currently under scrutiny due to unsustainable placement models. Students experience the burdens of lengthy unpaid placements as financial stress, poverty, and mental distress when balancing increasing responsibilities, such as caring. Students also experience social exclusion due to inequitable access to courses because of intersectional factors not limited to race, ethnicity, class, gender, and (dis)-ability. In combination with this context, global social and environmental crises present challenges and opportunities to contribute to solutions, for example adopting sustainable and regenerative practice paradigms for social work field education. This chapter explores the importance of engaging students in placement experiences that are sustainable at both the individual and societal levels and points to the need to adopt regenerative paradigms that support social work’s social justice agenda to address current key academic, social, and environmental concerns.