Developing Academic Skills

Constructive oral and written communication, and the effective and ethical management and presentation of knowledge and information, are essential for both academic work at degree level and your professional practice. This unit will enable you to develop your understanding of the skills and conventions of academic study in higher education and within your discipline, and recognise their transferability to and relevance for your work with service users and professional colleagues. You will be encouraged to identify your own academic strengths, areas for development, and strategies to support your academic growth.  

By the end of the unit the students will have gained an understanding of key academic skills such as assessment planning, how to effectively use BREO, searching for and sourcing academic material, learning to reference and how to construct essays, presentations and consideration of the differences between academic work and professional report writing.

Human Growth And Development Across The Lifespan

This unit will provide you with a solid understanding of human development to inform assessment, planning and intervention with infants, children, young people and their families and adults. This unit will provide you with the theoretical knowledge that will inform your professional practice. It will also assist you in developing awareness of aspects of difference that may affect human development, including gender, culture, race, society, disability, disadvantage and environment. In addition, the unit assignment will enable you to develop your observational skills in relation to human development. 

Working With People

This unit aims to provide you with an introduction to a range of theories, methods and skills used in professional practice. Theory helps to predict, explain and assess situations and behaviour and provides a rationale for intervention.  Methods are specific techniques and approaches which professional workers use in practice. 

The key themes which this unit will focus on are how do professionals recognise human need and how should they respond to meeting identified needs.  Taught theory will enhance your capacity for effective communication and the development of relationship based practice with individuals and in groups to improve service-user outcomes. Within this, the concept of congruence will be explored – do we see ourselves as others see us?  Are our interventions received as they are intended? The models and underpinning theories will be put into practice in the classroom which will prepare you for the realities of practice. The unit will require you to engage in activities with each other which will bring the theory to life and give meaning to the various models of communication.  

Readiness For Social Work Practice

‘The term professional may be taken to define…those aspects of a profession that mark it as a moral practice-and correspondingly, the term ‘unprofessional’ largely services to identify failures to meet the moral standards of an occupation’ (Carr, 2018, p. 4). Students entering social work have varying levels of experience and understanding of the role of social workers, but all must demonstrate a baseline of ‘readiness to practice’ in accordance with The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) Professional Capabilities Framework (2018), the current framework for social work practice in England.

Eight days (a minimum of 50 hours) will be allocated to the completion of relevant work-based learning. This is not a placement. You will be supported to identify and engage with new or existing work-based learning opportunities that will enable you to apply the theoretical learning from the unit to practice and to develop requisite skills in preparation for the first practice learning opportunity situated in Level 5. Work-based learning is self-sourced and self-directed and can include voluntary or paid work.

The Legislative Framework For Professional Practice

This Unit aims to provide you with a broad introduction and foundational knowledge to the legal system and how this influences and guides professional practice.  The Unit will specifically encourage you to reflect on the application of the law for professional practice. The teaching and learning will explore the role of law and legal intervention in the lives of members of society, looking at the way law is made and how social life is ordered through legal institutions, rules and official practices. The dilemma of Care versus Control and how the State responds to challenges of people’s actions and behaviour will also be considered. 

This unit aims to promote your critical understanding of:

• The statutory frameworks for professional practice and social welfare issues.
• The relationship between law and practice
• The role of law in promoting professional values and purposes.
• How application of the law and the various legal options available either promote or constrain the rights of service users.
• The legal rules and administrative law that regulate how professional practice is conducted.

You will develop insight into various legal frameworks including the underpinning ethical principles and the implications of these for service users. You will also gain an understanding of the relationship between the law and an ethical value base.

Sociology And Social Policy In Practice

This unit explores how society is structured and how the welfare system responds to different social issues such as poverty. 

Sociology will be introduced as a tool of enquiry and exploration to examine societal inequalities and how these inequalities are played out in society. Using a sociological lens, the importance of understanding the origins of power, prejudice, stigma and stereotyping will be emphasised which is of relevance to the application of sound ant-oppressive practice. 

The major traditions of modern sociological theory with initial focus on the work of the ‘pioneers of sociology will be taught. This knowledge is then applied to a range of contemporary social issues and relevant social policy responses. The unit will also explore patterns and processes of social divisions and inequality and how they are formed, maintained and challenged.

You will explore how an understanding of sociology, social issues and social policy can promote or compromise professional roles, purposes and a commitment to social justice. The understanding gained in these areas will enable you to respond appropriately to social issues and to challenge inequality and oppression.

First 70 Day Placement

Successful completion of the BSc in Social Work yields a professional qualification providing eligibility for students to register as a social worker with Social Work England (SWEP as well as an academic award. You are therefore expected to demonstrate professional capability as well as academic attainment.

The 70 day placement will enable students to demonstrate through direct practice, assessed work and reflective learning logs their understanding and ability to apply Domains 1 to 9 of the Professional Capabilities Framework (BASW, 2018) at end of first placement level. There will be further skills days to support integration of theory to practice during the placement and to prepare for the last placement.

Issues And Contexts: Engagement And Partnership

Building on learning from the first year of the course, you will examine in depth some of the overarching issues for children and adults in need of social work intervention, locating the issues within their wider social, political, legislative and practice contexts. This unit aims to explore the essential skills and knowledge underpinning social work practice, affording you the opportunity to examine these alongside current research, expert opinion and practice initiatives.

Evidence-Based Social Work Practice

How do practitioners effectively identify, evaluate and employ information from diverse sources? This unit is designed to enable you to analyse and apply the different sources of knowledge that underpin evidence-based practice. This includes knowledge from research, which the unit recognises as central in advancing knowledge for practice that effectively meets the needs of service users. In addition, the unit’s emphasis on communicating and applying knowledge effectively both consolidate learning at Level 4 and prepares you for your research project at Level 6. 

Issues And Contexts: Authority And Control

This unit builds upon the learning gained through the ‘Issues and Contexts: engagement and partnership’ unit, preparing you for the use of authority in statutory settings.  The unit therefore allows you to examine in depth the legislative and policy context underpinning interventions that ensure that adults, young people and children are safeguarded. You will have the opportunity to explore and understand the issues that trigger statutory duties to safeguard adults and children and the wider social political / social policy contexts in which they occur and consider consequent interventions in line with professional values, anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice.  

Social Work In Multi-Agency And Inter-Professional Teams

Professional social workers require a critical appreciation and understanding of the complexities associated with working within and across multi-agency / interprofessional teams. The unit aims to provide you with knowledge, understanding and skills to work within and across different social care contexts with colleagues from other professions and users of services. This unit of study will include 2 skills days.

Last 100 Day Placement

How do social workers learn the essential knowledge, skills and values to become a capable and confident social worker in practice?

The BSc Social Work provides a professional qualification which allows successful students to become registered social workers with  Social Work England as well as receiving an academic award. You are therefore expected to demonstrate professional competence as well as academic attainment. The 100-day placement component of this Unit will enable you to demonstrate, through direct practice, assessed work and reflective learning logs, your understanding and ability to apply and evaluate all of the domains of the Professional Capabilities Framework (BASW, 2018) at qualifying social worker Level, together with the SWE (2020) Professional Standards. In order to meet the requirements of this unit, you will be expected to synthesise, apply and evaluate your understanding of current theory, methodologies, research, policy and legislative frameworks building on learning from the first year of the course. 

Social Work Issues And Interventions

This unit utilises current intervention methods and practice initiatives in social work to enable students to develop the capacity to work with individuals, families and, groups from culturally diverse backgrounds and circumstances, in a range of settings and complex situations. This unit builds on the knowledge that students gained in their level four unit ‘Working With People’ and consolidates the learning gained at level five in the units ‘Issues and contexts: partnership and engagement and Issues and contexts: authority and control’. This unit also complements the knowledge and skills taught in the level six units ‘Critical Ethical Reflective Practice and Consolidation’ as students will be expected to draw on their placement experiences in order to embed their learning in practice.

Students will have the opportunity to develop intervention skills in order to work effectively with service users across the age span and to devise specialist intervention strategies for the realities of social work practice in the fields of vulnerable adults, mental health and children and families in different contexts and organisations.

In addition, by drawing on staff research expertise, students will be afforded the opportunity to consider current research findings and the implications for intervention with vulnerable people.

Critical Ethical Reflective Practice

Eileen Munro in her 2011 review of Child Protection, identified ‘The core skills for a good worker/child relationship are listening, being able to convey genuine interest, empathic concern, understanding, emotional warmth, respect for the child, and the capacity to reflect and to manage emotions’ [p28]. These core skills are essential for effective intervention with all service user groups. In addition to this Munro (2011) further identified the need for practitioners to be able to reflect on, critically evaluate and analyse the content and context of their practice, in order to function effectively as qualified practitioners.

The unit is therefore designed, to draw together the learning from a range of units across the course, consolidating and further developing the requisite knowledge and skills to equip students to become critical, ethical reflective practitioners who are able to make complex, professional decisions within the context of their daily practice. The Unit seeks to broaden the students’ knowledge of the different perspectives on social issues including social and economic disadvantage in Britain’s diverse multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. 

Consolidation For Social Work Practice

This unit is designed to support students to transition from student to qualified practitioner.

Research Project For Professional Social Work Practice

This unit provides you with the opportunity to conduct an in depth, library-based investigation upon a negotiated topic relevant to your professional practice. Your interest in the subject area may have been stimulated directly by studies on the course, by career choices or personal experience. The unit permits you to focus part of the course to your own interests and at the same time helps develop useful academic skills and understandings, as you will meet situations at work or in further academic study in which you will need to undertake or understand research. It will also deepen your understanding of the practical and ethical issues pertinent in undertaking research.