Funding placement year -unpaid internship

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

That is bad news. Total madness to have such an exemption and those responsible for leaving the legal loophole like that should be ashamed. Seems like something else that some ordinary soul needs to put him or herself out to challenge through the flippin' courts.

pwincessDebs

Thank you for your replies.

For placement year the SLC only gives half of what she would receive if she were at uni as they 'assume all placements are paid' No one in SLC has any direction to point me. HMRC had no direction to point me. University said she could apply for hardship grant which would not even cover a months rent and had no further advice for me.
She has now found her second placement for 6 months which will cover travel. I still need to find money to pay her rent and food after Spring terms garnt runs out - in January. I know there must be others in this situation somewhere.....

I guess I just keep applying for grants.

Thanks everyone

jackieblack

pwincessDebs wrote: »

Thank you for your replies.

For placement year the SLC only gives half of what she would receive if she were at uni as they 'assume all placements are paid' No one in SLC has any direction to point me. HMRC had no direction to point me. University said she could apply for hardship grant which would not even cover a months rent and had no further advice for me.
She has now found her second placement for 6 months which will cover travel. I still need to find money to pay her rent and food after Spring terms garnt runs out - in January. I know there must be others in this situation somewhere.....

I guess I just keep applying for grants.

Thanks everyone

This is alarming. DD is now in the process of applying for Uni and we have been told, at Uni Open Days, that in their placement year they would get just the same student loan/grant as if they were attending Uni that year.

Am a bit shocked to find out that may not be true :eek:

nimbo

have you looked at the turn to us website -

i got a £300 grant from one of the recommended organizations there - i know not much, but a few of those would help....

Annisele

pwincessDebs wrote: »

I know there must be others in this situation somewhere.....

I guess a lot of them are on the same course as your DD - does she know how any of them are getting funding?

bewildered123

atypical wrote: »

Placement years are excluded. There was a lot of press one time about unpaid interns acting as MPs' researchers. This died down after the University of Leeds introduced a Politics course with a 1 year placement as an MPs assistant (unpaid of course). Seems no better an outcome to me.

http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/undergraduates/ba-politics-parliamentary-studies/

I don't work for Leeds but that course has been running for over 20 years as I have a friend who did it in 1991, and it wasn't new then.

sarahlouisexo

Unfortunately there isn't much help available for internships, work experience placements, etc etc I say this as a student struggling myself with this catch 22 situation!

Contact student finance with a letter from her placement which says she is unpaid, see if they'll give her any extra finance (backdated hopefully). Alternatively she needs to look at getting some sort of weekend or bar job unfortunately.

JMAS

Unpaid internships are such a big issue at the moment and I really think there needs to be more information out there to help young people find their way.

I did a handful of internships (some paid, others unpaid) straight after leaving university and I agree that finance is a major barrier to securing work experience. I was only able to do unpaid work after living at home and carefully saving just enough money to get by.

That's why I'm really interested in how graduates are coping with employment post-university and so I have set up a short survey on the Relational Schools Project website, which is open to recent UK grads (2009-2013).