Are you passionate about supporting children and families? Would you like a career where you can tackle issues such as health inequalities and poverty? This exciting course offers you the ideal preparation.

• Prepare for a fulfilling career in roles such as family support worker or community health worker
• Gain invaluable skills and knowledge to support children and families to make their lives better
• Build your experience through highly practical projects and a work placement
• Conduct meaningful research into some of the most pressing issues facing children, families and society today
• Engage with our enthusiastic and highly experienced teaching team who are dedicated to your success
• Undertake assessments which reflect what happens in the workplace: there are no exams on this course
• Build a strong platform for further postgraduate study if you wish to specialise in a profession like nursing, social work or teaching.

Our BSc (Hons) Child and Family Health and Wellbeing is your stepping stone to a role where you can make a positive difference every working day. You’ll be part of a new generation of dedicated, creative and highly capable professionals supporting children, families and their wider communities.

We’re proud to welcome applications from candidates with practice experience in youth work, health, social care and education. This is as part of our commitment to enable those from non-traditional backgrounds to be able to study as part of our commitment to widening participation.

A vital role in society

This course is ideal for anyone interested in helping families and children to reach their potential. We will equip you with the skills, understanding and values you need to work in a broad range of settings delivering health, social and developmental work.

You will learn how to provide high-quality support services which are critical to sustaining family life, sometimes in the face of problems such as poverty, illness, domestic violence and mental health issues. We help you to support vulnerable families with respect and compassion, promoting strong parenting skills and healthier lifestyles.

Throughout, you will take a holistic view of children’s and young people’s needs – emotionally, socially, educationally and from health perspectives. You will also consider those needs in the context of the wider community.

Ensuring you are work-ready

Ours is a highly vocational degree where you will be treated as a professional worker in training. We help you meet demanding standards so that you can hit the ground running from day one in your career.

The focus is on applying your skills to practical scenarios. You will find yourself writing up home visit reports, devising family learning resources such as games, and harnessing music, dance or drama to help children express themselves creatively.

With family support workers frequently on the frontline of tackling crucial public health concerns, you will also work on practical projects covering everything from healthy eating and exercise to children’s dental health.

Advanced knowledge, practical research

Because it leads to a BSc qualification, this degree sets you apart from graduates of other Child and Family Health courses. We place a strong emphasis on scientific knowledge in areas such as health psychology to enhance your professional credibility.

Another distinctive feature is a focus on primary research. In your second year, you build your practical skills in research methods. You then go on to complete a major research study in your final year, covering a theme of your choice and centred on actual workplace practice.

Your experience of research, data collection and analysis will help raise your profile as a critical, independent thinker. It will give you the confidence and capacity to lead change in the workplace, based on strong evidence.

Gain practical experience on placement

In your final year, you undertake a placement working in health and wellbeing settings. It could be with a family support team, social work team, children’s centre, hospital, school or voluntary organisation.

Because strong inter-personal and communication skills are essential to your career success, you will gain meaningful experience of building positive relationships with children, families and other practitioners.

In earlier stages of the course you are also encouraged and supported to undertake voluntary work in relevant settings to prepare for your placement.

Placement hours are subject to change.

Strong professional partnerships to inspire you

This course has been designed in partnership with employers across the health and social care sector. We liaise closely with professionals ranging from children’s centre managers to health promotion workers to ensure that your learning is up to date, relevant and purposeful.

You will hear from a wide variety of specialist guest speakers. Some focus on specific themes like domestic violence, safeguarding or the Prevent agenda. Others share insights from their own experiences in roles such as health visitor, family support worker or social worker.

Working together to learn from each other

Successful professionals who work with children and families have to be adaptable, versatile and resilient, prepared to work with other professionals in multi-agency teams. You will therefore have opportunities to learn with, and from, students from other disciplines through our College of Health and Social Care's Inter-Professional Learning agenda. This is very important in preparing you to work alongside other practitioners after graduation.

Outstanding learning facilities

You can take this course at our Derby Campus offer outstanding learning environments including clinical skills suites built to professional standards, with replica wards, counselling rooms and treatment rooms fully equipped with the latest clinical resources.

How you will learn

Exciting and highly interactive, this course places great emphasis on applied learning. You will build on the theory you learn through traditional lectures, tutorials, seminars and workshops by taking part in activity-based group work, delivering presentations and undertaking independent research in the wider community.

We pride ourselves on offering a supportive, friendly and welcoming learning environment where you can fulfil your ambitions.

How you're assessed

There are no exams and all your assessments will centre on work-related themes and professional practice so you are well prepared for the challenges you will encounter in your career.

Assessments take a variety of innovative forms including reflective diaries, practical work undertaken in our professional skills suite, presentations, reports, a portfolio of the work you complete on placement, and observations of your practice. We offer a wide range of support to help you with the assessments at all stages of the degree.

Who you will meet

You will be inspired and motivated by our dedicated teaching team who boast extensive experience of working with children and families in a broad spectrum of roles.

We also draw on the expertise of research-active staff across our College of Health and Social Care, so you will benefit from insights into nursing, social work, counselling, psychotherapy, health promotion and creative expressive therapies.

The core teaching team includes:

• Head of Discipline, Liz Eate, a registered adult general nurse who gained her Postgraduate Certificate in Specialist Community Public Health Nursing at the University. She has previously worked as a Health Visitor for Community Development and as a Family Nurse for the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP), drawing on her special interest in teenage parents and safeguarding.
• Senior Lecturer, Claire Ambrose, who has over 25 years’ experience in leading and managing work with children, young people and families in settings such as the NHS, family centres, healthy living centres and health action zones.  Originally a teacher, she has specialist research interests in areas including mental health, family learning, health inequalities and the pressures facing families affected by poverty. Claire worked as an Ofsted inspector for six years and has been an assessor for the National Patient Safety Agency within the NHS since 2003.