STUDY

This Level 7 module is designed to prepare you for safe and effective engagement in direct social work practice. It provides the essential foundation for your first practice placement by assessing your readiness to work with service users, carers, and professionals in a manner that reflects the values and expectations of the profession. At this stage of your development, you are required to demonstrate an awareness and understanding of the nine domains of the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). By engaging with these domains, they begin to appreciate the holistic nature of social work practice and the interconnection between professional knowledge, skills, and values.

A central focus of the module is the importance of social work ethics, integrity, honesty, working in a non-discriminatory and anti-oppressive manner and the maintenance of appropriate professional boundaries. These form the cornerstone of safe and accountable practice and are key to building trust with service users and colleagues. You will be supported to explore how personal values intersect with professional responsibilities, ensuring they develop the capacity to act ethically in complex situations. Equally important is the development of core communication skills. You will have opportunities to reflect on your communication style, practice active listening, and consider the impact of verbal and non-verbal communication. Through reflective exercises, you will learn to recognise your strengths and areas for growth, and to view reflection as an ongoing tool for professional learning and improvement.

By the end of the module, you will have established a baseline of professional capability that demonstrates you are ready to progress to their first practice placement. You will have begun to develop self-awareness, reflective capacity, and the ability to conduct themselves with professionalism and integrity, all of which are vital in ensuring safe, ethical, and effective social work practice.

This module is designed to introduce you to the key legal frameworks and social policy developments that shape and inform contemporary social work practice in the UK. It provides you with an essential foundation in understanding how law, policy, and ethics operate together to protect the rights of individuals and ensure accountability within the profession. As a profession, social work requires practitioners to have the ability to operate confidently within legal boundaries. The module provides opportunities for you to explore how social policy is created, including the role of government and social institutions, and how policies impact diverse communities, especially those who are marginalised or disadvantaged. you will commence with a critical reflection on the links between law, policy, and structural inequality, and how social workers can challenge oppression within these systems.   

The module aims to equip you with a foundational understanding of the legal and policy context within which social work occurs. It seeks to develop your ability to interpret and apply key legislation and social policy to practice situations, while fostering the values of human rights, equality and social justice that underpin ethical decision-making in social work. 

Social Work students are required to spend 170 days gaining required experience and learning in practice settings and 30 practice skills days (provided largely in Year 1) You must have experience in at least two contrasting (for example, adults’ and children’s settings) practice settings.

In the first placement you will undertake assessed practice learning of 70 days for the academic year. The aims of the first assessed practice placement is to provide supervised learning opportunities for you to acquire and develop capability, knowledge and skills in professional social work practice as expressed through the Professional Capabilities Framework, and informed by Social Work England (2019) Professional Standards. You are expected to actively engage with the support of a qualified Practice Educator to reflect, synthesise and apply to their practice, knowledge and understanding from theory and research and learning from other modules, and present a clear sense of their personal and professional values, and an understanding of the moral, ethical and social justice basis of social work.

The individual moves through various stages of the lifespan, and this module, Human Behaviour and Lifespan Development offers you the opportunity to examine the implications of a development process and life stages on the individual’s behaviour.   

The module aims to introduce you to the conceptual frameworks of human development from pre-birth to old age, encompassing both ‘normal’ and atypical development. You will be able to gain a basic understanding to underpin their practice and develop assessment skills. Cultural diversity, gender, disability, age, sexuality, religion and ethnicity will be addressed so that your awareness will be raised in relation to anti-discriminatory practice, social justice and inter-professional working.

Social work takes place in communities and institutions, with individuals and groups and operates within legal, political and economic contexts. Social workers must act to safeguard children and support them and their families. Children’s wishes and feelings must be sought and listened to and at the same time decisions must be taken in their best interests. Having knowledge of the law (including human / children’s rights legislation), procedures, ethics, and research including learning from serious case reviews (SCRs), as well as being skillful in working directly with children and families and effectively communicating with other professionals, is the foundation of excellent practice. This module enables you to learn and develop knowledge skills and values essential for effective practice. 

This module aims to present seminal and up-to-date knowledge about effective practice working to support and safeguard children. The module creates opportunities to deepen understanding of the knowledge presented and to develop skills and values that help you feel confident about their practice in this area. You will be encouraged to make links to practice experiences and think critically about the politics of social work with children. From a children’s rights perspective, you will learn how children are marginalised, disadvantaged, abused and harmed and how social workers can work in remarkable ways alongside other professionals, to prevent and safeguard children from abuse and neglect and support children and families who may be in need.

Economic and political factors influence the legal and policy response to particular societal factors which are deemed to be social problems and what is then defined as social need. These are influenced by political ideology, prevailing economic conditions, and global factors. Legal responses which define how people are treated, are shaped by contemporary  values and ideologies, and reflect how social needs and wants are determined along a continuum of debate and change. This module will cover the essential learning for you to understand the political systems, legal strategies and policy initiatives which relate to adults. An understanding of the processes that shape policy and legislation and their impact on the evolving configuration of social work is important for effective practice. This will include the ability to demonstrate that they understand how particular groups in society can be marginalised and discriminated against through legal and policy systems.   

Within the above frameworks, the focus of teaching and learning will be on you developing in depth knowledge in relation to a range of areas of social work practice with adults, to equip them to undertake direct work with service participants  and their carers and to be able to effectively manage front line practice, showing their ability to apply legislation and policy in practice.  

The key aim of this module is to enable you to discuss, analyse and evaluate the effectiveness and efficacy of national legislation and how policy is applied at regional and local levels. Contextualising social work practice with adults within a legal, political, social, and economic framework, you will be encouraged to analyse and evaluate the constraints and opportunities which arise within this continually changing context.   

In year 2 of the programme you will undertake assessed practice learning of at least 100 days for the academic year. The aims of assessed practice learning at this level are to provide opportunities for you to acquire,  develop and demonstrate capability, knowledge and skills in professional social work practice as expressed through the Professional Capabilities Framework and Social Work England (2019) Professional Standards. You are expected to evaluate, synthesise and apply to their practice, knowledge and understanding from other modules, and a clear sense of their personal and professional values, and an understanding of the moral, ethical and social justice basis of social work. In the second placement, you are expected to engage in placement activity that evidences their ability to undertake statutory tasks and interventions

This module enables you to design and execute independent, methodologically robust social work research that makes an original practice-relevant contribution. Emphasis is placed on epistemology and methodology, critical engagement with evidence, research, and governance mobilisation to policy and practice. The module aims to; provide the opportunity to conduct a literature-based study in an area relevant to social work, with explicit attention to reflexivity, anti-oppressive practice, and stakeholder perspectives , consolidate advanced skills in research design, critical appraisal, and ethical inquiry., and enable you to synthesise theoretical frameworks and practice knowledge to inform social work scholarship and practice, and to mobilise findings into clear, actionable implications for policy and practice.