Health and Social Care Studies BSc (Hons)

The Faculty of Health and Wellbeing has an extensive health and social care portfolio. The FdSc provides a principal route for the training and education of Assistant Practitioners.

This emerging role is not considered to require registration with professional bodies. The top up award is designed to enhance the qualifications of people who will work in non-registered roles across health and social care organisations.

The underpinning rationale for its development has been informed by NHS Employers (2015) who identified the Assistant Practitioner as a non-occupational specific role that has developed to assist organisations in delivering high quality and patient centred services in a variety of settings. An Assistant Practitioner is a worker who competently delivers health and social care to and for people. They are non-registered practitioners who have a required level of knowledge and skill beyond that of traditional healthcare assistants or support workers and are expected to undertake more complex tasks (Skills for Health, 2009).

The course has been designed in response to rapidly changing workforce demands and policy initiatives aimed at modernising services and improving quality, productivity and efficiency (Department of Health 2016, Skills for Health 2015, Centre for Workforce Intelligence 2015, Willis 2015, Francis 2013). Key drivers include: staff shortages, requirements to enhance capacity and cost-efficiency, technological developments, integration of services and reconfiguration in provision including a shift from secondary care to primary, community-based services. Consequently, Assistant Practitioners need to be educated to be empowered workers with 'time to care'. Assistant Practitioner roles have been developed in a wide range of services that includes long term conditions, Staying Healthy, End of Life Care, Maternity and Newborn, Acute Care, Planned Care, Mental Health, and Children and Families. Assistant Practitioner roles are locally designed to work within a single profession such as nursing, physiotherapy or speech and language therapy or to work across professional and organisational boundaries.Following the completion of the FdSc programme students may apply to progress onto a range of pre-registration degree programmes. For example, students might apply and join a Nursing course at level 5 which will lead to registration as a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council. A number of students, however, might choose not to apply for, or indeed, be suitable for professional registration routes and therefore this exit award, which further enhances their skills and knowledge and equips then to work in integrated health and social care settings has been developed. The FdSc and BSc(Hons) are suitable for those wishing to pursue a career in health and social care but who are either unsure about which field of practice they wish to work within or are perhaps not eligible to access a pre-registration course.