Health and Social Care

Health and social care are fast-growing areas of employment and academic investigation. Our new BA Health and Social Care has been designed to bring together the very best of this interdisciplinary area to provide you with a strong grounding in:

• the national and international context of health and social care

• the inequalities that shape changing needs

• the policies that respond to them.

Taught by academic experts from across the social sciences and humanities, this course will enable you to gain work-relevant skills and to develop academic expertise through our wide choice of option modules and opportunities for individual study.

The BA Health and Social Care is particularly suitable if you are interested in understanding how arts and humanities approaches can help us understand and respond to changing needs within health and social care, across time and space. You will use a wide range of sources, such as policy documents, literary texts, film and archives to develop a deep understanding of people’s relationships to their own and others’ health.

If you opt for the Foundation Year route, this will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. It is ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, or if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you didn't achieve the grades you need for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.

This course has an evening timetable with classes taking place in the evening.

Highlights

• This interdisciplinary degree is taught by academic experts actively involved in health and social care research in the UK and around the globe from across our schools of Social Sciences; Historical Studies; and Creative Arts, Culture and Communication; and the Birkbeck Centre for Counselling.

• Teaching integrates key skills for employability in caring environments, for instance in the NHS, social care

Careers and employability

A degree in health and social care prepares you for a wide variety of careers in areas such as:

• public health

• mental health

• criminal justice

• management and administration

• child protection

• health promotion

• housing.

You will find health and social care graduates in the following kinds of role:

• family practitioner

• healthcare support worker

• public health practitioner

• children and young people’s development officer

• information, advice and guidance officer for vulnerable service users

• learning and education facilitator

• manager in social care or NHS.

We offer a comprehensive careers service - Careers and Enterprise - your career partner during your time at Birkbeck and beyond. At every stage of your career journey, we empower you to take ownership of your future, helping you to make the connection between your experience, education and future ambitions.