Program Overview

Are you a practitioner looking to expand your knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of the complex and continually changing contexts in which you work? This distance learning program is an ideal choice to advance your professional abilities and develop the support you provide to vulnerable young people. 

Through gaining the professional skills and knowledge taught on this course, your work can provide support to families and community groups and help keep young people safe. 

The blend of practical and academic skills you’ll be taught on this programme can prepare you for a range of jobs across several sectors. It will help develop you as a progressive practitioner, providing opportunities to explore various concepts and practices of social justice and equality. With the option to study either full-time or part-time, you can manage your studies effectively alongside work commitments. This programme is ideal for those who use group work, informal learning, outreach and community work as part of their role, particularly those working with young people and adults often identified as hard to reach. 

Throughout this course, you’ll benefit from inter-professional learning as the course attracts professionals from a variety of settings and sectors worldwide, including parenting education, youth work, children’s centers, sexual health, drug and substance abuse, housing and homelessness, youth offending, disability, mental health, community development, domestic violence, local government sector, the voluntary and not-for-profit sector and non-governmental organizations.

Key features

• Benefit from the flexible approach this program offers, allowing you to tailor your studies specifically to your career interests, enhancing your employment opportunities in your desired field. 
• You have the choice to study part-time or full-time alongside your work commitments, mainly through distance learning with two block teaching weeks per academic year. 
• With this course, you’ll be able to develop your skills to be an innovative, progressive practitioner, able to engage reflectively with concepts and practices of social justice and equality.
• Learn from our team of expert academics who can draw on more than 55 years’ professional training experience in the field, so their sector insight will inform your learning and keep you acquainted with contemporary challenges and practices.
• Research conducted by our academics in areas such as Diversity and Inequalities, Youth Work and Community Development, Public Health and Professional Practice, Health and Social Care; is embedded into the curriculum to ensure learning is current and relevant.
• Many of our graduates progress on to a wide variety of careers in youth work and community development, as well as other roles related to non-clinical, non-medical health and educational services in both the statutory and voluntary sectors.