Working with Children and Families

The BA (Hons) Working with Children and Families programme at Northumberland College in partnership with the University of Cumbria is designed flexibly to meet the needs of students in a wide range of contexts. Appropriate to education, early years, residential care, family support, Early Help, playwork and youthwork careers, among others, the programme seeks to facilitate learning in key areas relating to, for example, safeguarding, leadership, health and wellbeing, empowering communities and research. Students will focus on their area of interest and their preferred age range rather than studying generically across the span of childhood and adolescents. Students will gain valuable work experience within their training package; this may be based in their place of work if appropriate (any childcare context catering for children or young people aged from birth to eighteen or their families). Voluntary placements can also be accessed to meet this aspect of the programme and allow theory and practice to merge and deepen understanding at a higher level. Running on a Thursday evening from September to June, there are additional study sessions facilitated on six Saturdays across the year to support the dissertation research process. Students entering this programme will have the autonomy to direct the focus of their study throughout to mirror their interests/experience, within the remit of the modular outcomes.

The aims are: 1.Provide a supportive and responsive learning environment that will enable students with different experiences to develop a flexible and transferable skill set 2. Engage students with a variety of learning experiences that build on skills and knowledge at each of the three levels of the programme to facilitate the development of a critical understanding of the children’s workforce and social care settings 3. Develop the skills, knowledge and understanding to work in integrated practice settings across the children’s workforce and social care settings sector 4. Confidently engage with and support the development of children, young people, families and communities 5. Plan, deliver and evaluate projects and interventions that support social action and social justice 6. Understand and locate themselves within the local, national and global children’s workforce and social care settings 7. Engage students in traditional and contemporary debates in the children’s workforce and social care settings with an emphasis on developing analytical skills that enable robust evidenced based theoretical challenge 8. Prepare students for Level 7 (postgraduate) study in an allied field; or for employment