The course has been co-written with employers from the field to ensure you are gaining the skills, knowledge and qualities that are essential to make you employable as a Youth and Community Worker. Lecturers are experienced and award-winning qualified youth workers who come from vast and varied young people focussed backgrounds. These include youth centres, working with children with disabilities, young carers, youth justice, education, outdoor learning, outreach and detached and many more bespoke projects. The learning will prepare you for a career working with children and young people in a range of settings, helping them to enhance their personal, social and educational development. 

Year One

In year one you will study the modular content of the pathway. This is the taught element of the course and will involve attendance at lectures, seminars, tutorials alongside your professional practice placement and a variety of outdoor learning settings.

Applying Values, Principles and Policies in Youth and Community Work

Values, purpose, and professional identity of Youth Work, enabling students to understand and demonstrate ownership of their own professional identities through exploration of the theories, practices and principles that underpin Youth Work.

Professional Practice

To enable students to further develop and consolidate their Youth and Community Work skills, knowledge and competencies through engagement in constructive professional learning (300 hours) and related critical reflection.

Restorative Justice with children, young people and communities

To critique traditional, informal small society and community led cultural practices which respond to conflict and examine how these have influenced the movement and shape of restorative approaches across countries, disciplines and services.

Ethics, Reflection and Safeguarding

To provide students with the tools to think independently, sensitively and critically about the role that ethical values play, and how ethical challenges are negotiated, in work with children and young people.

Sport, Play and Outdoor Learning in Youth Work

For the student to examine the development of young people through the medium of sport, play and outdoor learning, with emphasis on targeted provision and outcome informed reflection.

Research methods, leadership and project management

For students to be equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to plan research and to demonstrate vision, originality, reflective practice and reflexivity and leadership.

Year Two

Year two is focused on the completion of your choice of either a dissertation or a major project.  This will be supervised by an academic with either an academic interest or professional background aligned with your chosen area of research.

The taught element of the course happens on one day a week. Alongside this, you will also undertake two professional placements, totalling 300 hours. If you are new to Youth Work, you will be supervised by a JNC qualified supervisor and you will undertake placements with young people aged 11-25 years old. If you are already Youth Work Qualified via an UG degree your placement can be in a wider range of service areas working with children, young people, families and communities. You may also be supervised by someone with a different professional background.

Major Project

To enable students to produce a logical, coherent, and defensible study which is critical and analytical, which evaluates the research process and findings and draws logical and thoughtful conclusions and recommendations for practice and /or for further research.

Dissertation

To enable students to produce a logical, coherent, and defensible study which is critical and analytical, which evaluates the research process and findings and draws logical and thoughtful conclusions and recommendations for practice and /or for further research.

Relationships with employers, workforce representatives and community groups inform teaching of course content. We draw on a diverse range of Youth and Community Work practitioners who deliver elements of modules in a way that links practice experience to the theoretical understanding that students develop in their taught modules. This relationship with practitioners is crucial in enabling and facilitating the way students’ reflection on how theory links to practice and vice versa.

“A variety of appropriate assessment activities makes for a richer student experience” (External Examiner, 2018). This course builds upon the creative and innovative assessments seen in the previous iteration with further embedding of employability skills and a more diverse and inclusive curriculum and assessment offer.