If you are interested in studying social work, take a look at the Entry requirements (below). 

About the department

The Social Work programme sits within the Institute of Applied Social Studies (IASS). IASS provides a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate social policy and social work programmes, including accredited post-qualifying awards in social work. The Institute has three research centres and staff within IASS have a strong national and international research profile. Information about the centres and about the research interests of staff can be found on the IASS website: www.birmingham.ac.uk/iass.

IASS social work staff have also played an active part in the University’s HEFCE-funded Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health (CEIMH). Information about the CEIMH can be found at www.birmingham.ac.uk/ceimh.

Course structure

The following is a brief outline of the course content for the three years of study on the BA Social Work, as well as 170 days of professional practice learning (70 in Year 2 and 100 in Year 3). Additional electives offer students the opportunity to focus on a particular area of interest and exciting new projects, such as the International Exchange Project and the award-winning Survivor Arts Project, allow students to move beyond the core curriculum and explore different ways of seeing the world and more creative ways of working. Watch the following video diary of our first exchange visit to Rotterdam, and a film of our award-winning Survivor Arts Project.

Year 1

You will have the opportunity to develop core academic skills and explore the key disciplines informing social work: Social Policy; Psychology and Human Development; Sociology; Social Welfare and Inequalities.  You will also be introduced to the social and organisational context of social work and will be given the chance to develop and practice skills in readiness for your first placement of 70 days professional practice learning. This will take place at the beginning of your second year.

The Social work regulatory body, the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the College of Social Work, requires that before our students go out onto placement that they have the basic skills needed to work with a wide variety of people and talk to service users with understanding and respect. As part of the readiness for practice skills development, you will be required to undertake a Shadowing Assessment period with a local family support organisation. During this period you will meet and interact with service users, carers, agency staff and other professionals and will be assessed on your performance before you are able to go out on your first practice placement.

You will also undertake Readiness for Practice Learning Interviews, role plays carried out with service users and carers. This way we ensure that students meet the basic standard before they go out into the ‘real world’.

Year 2

Students will undertake 70 days of professional practice learning. 

If you are interested in studying social work, take a look at the entry requirements (below).

We work in partnership with Birmingham City Council, who provide the majority of our placements and a range of voluntary and private sector organisations.  We also have a few placements with some neighbouring local authorities. However, we cannot guarantee any placements outside Birmingham itself and students who live outside Birmingham will be required to travel.

The placements on offer are challenging and also very rewarding.  Some of the areas of social work covered on placement are:

• Family support and prevention
• Domestic violence
• Refugee and asylum
• Special educational needs
• Fostering
• Child protection
• Disabilities
• Substance misuse

Students should be aware that placements in particular areas of interest are not guaranteed. However, all placements are quality assured, meet required HCPC and College of Social Work standards and provide a wide range of learning which is transferable to any setting.

In addition to your practice placement you will participate in a practice based reflection module designed to help you apply the values, knowledge and skills acquired, to the practice setting and in your work with a specific service user group.  You will also undertake a module in Social Justice and Inclusion and will follow a strand of teaching entitled: Respect, Integrity, Critical Perspectives and Helpfulness in Social Work Practice (RICH).

Year 3

You will undertake a further 100 days of professional practice learning which, in line with HCPC requirements, will be with a different service user group in a different agency setting.  All students will have the opportunity during at least one of their practice placements to undertake some statutory duties.

In conjunction with this you will again have the opportunity to reflect upon your learning in preparation for and within practice during the Professional Practice Reflection module.  Following on from this, the RICH strand of teaching will concentrate on cross-cutting issues for practice around risk and protection, whole-family approaches, collaborative working, and strengths based approaches.  You may then select one elective from a range focusing on areas such as: youth justice; substance abuse; domestic violence; disabled parents and families; learning disabilities and international perspectives in social work.

The final module, concentrates on research methods and skills and prepares you to develop, conduct and write up in the form of a dissertation, an individual piece of literature based research in an area of social work you are particularly interested in.  

As a Birmingham student you are part of an academic elite and will learn from world-leading experts. From the outset you will be encouraged to become an independent and self-motivated learner. We want you to be challenged and will encourage you to think for yourself.

Your learning will take place in a range of different settings, from scheduled teaching in lectures and small group tutorials, to self-study and peer group learning (for example preparing and delivering presentations with your classmates).

To begin with you may find this way of working challenging, but rest assured that we’ll enable you to make this transition. You will have access to a comprehensive support system that will assist and encourage you, including personal tutors and welfare tutors who can help with both academic and welfare issues, and a formal transition review during your first year to check on your progress and offer you help for any particular areas where you need support.

Service user and carer involvement

Service users, carers and practitioners work alongside academics to create a dynamic environment, both within the department and during supervised practice. The department values highly the contribution service user and carer colleagues make, and feedback from students confirms just how important the user perspective is in helping them to develop greater insight into the role social work can play in people's lives. 

Involving service users and carers in all aspects of admissions and the development and delivery of our social work qualifying programmes is a priority for us. We believe it offers students the opportunity to have a thorough grounding in service users' and carers' experiences and expectations from the very start of their social work training.

More information about service user and carer involvement in social work education

Meet some of our contributors

It is Birmingham’s focus on service user involvement that attracted me to this particular course. Service users should be involved in shaping the services that they need. Service user involvement in delivering this course will produce social workers who will be more effective in their practice”.

A journal article on 'Involving Service Users and Carers in Admissions for Courses in Social Work and Clinical Psychology: cross-disciplinary comparisons of practices at the University of Birmingham' was published in the British Journal of Social Work (Matka, E, River, D, Littlechild, R and Powell, T, 2009).

Practice placements

Students will undertake 170 days of professional practice learning (70 in Year 2 and 100 in Year 3). Due to its location and strong links with partner placement agencies, the University of Birmingham is able to provide a wide range of practice opportunities within statutory, voluntary and independent social care settings. The social work department is also fortunate to have a range of exciting new small student units and innovative practice projects and we regularly receive excellent feedback from students about these. The learning gained from these placements support and build on the learning taking place at the university. Hear what some of our students thought about their placement at 'Core Assets' in the following film.

Blended learning approach to teaching and assessment

Students learn about professional social work practice and develop their knowledge and skills through a teaching programme that promotes a variety of learning methods. We use a wide variety of participative learning methods and blended learning techniques, including the latest e-learning packages. These methods include: lectures; group work; case studies; skills development through role play and video; joint work with service user and carer colleagues; reading and research; and other self-directed development and learning.

You can see an online study skills module at www.skills4uni.bham.ac.uk .

Assessment is through assignments, presentations and portfolios with some exams and live practice scenarios.

Combining Facebook and enquiry-based blended learning to teach social media skills

The following short film outlines how Facebook and an enquiry-based blended learning design were used to help students develop professional social media skills, knowledge and approaches. The film also include student feedback about their experiences of engaging with this learning design. As educators, we are aware that students who connect using Facebook during their studies can maintain these social networks once they leave University. They can also potentially use these social networks to discuss future work related issues. To enable students to learn about the potential and pitfalls of sharing, communicating and collaborating using social networks once in employment, this learning design was developed to equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge required to use these tools professionally. This film provides an illustration of the commitment social work staff at the University of Birmingham have in continually striving to ensure their students are equipped with the relevant skills and knowledge necessary for their future roles.

The following video, Child Protection Blended Learning, demonstrates one of the innovative approaches used at the University of Birmingham to teach social work students. It explores an enquiry-based learning approach to teaching child protection processes. Using a mixture of face-to-face teaching, technology-supported, online enquiry-based activities and role play, students explain how they were able to develop the planning, recording, assessing and communication skills required to respond to a child protection referral. The video demonstrates the commitment of social work academics at Birmingham to remain at the cutting edge of innovation in learning and teaching in social work education.

Career opportunities

There is a clear progression from the social work programme to professional practice. A significant number of our graduate students find work in the agency or authority where they have been placed and many others are successful in gaining employment within the region - many in a statutory setting, others in voluntary organisations or the private sector. Where our graduate social work students have sought employment outside of the region or overseas they have been in the advantageous position of having a qualification from a university which is well recognised, both in the UK and abroad. At the University of Birmingham there are opportunities for continuing professional and academic development through other programmes in the Institute of Applied Social Studies.

For students who have their own allocated Social Worker in Birmingham it is unlikely that the University would be able to place them within the same local authority. Should this situation arise the University would look to find an appropriate practice placement within an alternative local authority or within the voluntary sector.

This programme offers a professional training which will prepare you to register with the HCPC as a professional social worker. The HCPC will require you to complete an application for professional registration form upon graduating (go to the HCPC website for more information). It is this professional body who will determine your professional status. As such, the offer of a place on the programme is not a guarantee that you will be able to register with the HCPC.

On successful completion of the BA in Social Work, students are equipped to work in a wide range of areas. We make sure students have experience of working with two different service user groups in two different social care settings whilst on placement. In the final year of the course, students have the chance to undertake a specialist academic pathway focusing on children and families or adults, including mental health, as well as completing a dissertation in a specialist area of interest.

The experience gained in these particular fields allows students to build specialist as well as core generic knowledge and skills. This means that transferable knowledge and skills are gained which allows students to apply for a wide variety of jobs in the voluntary, private and statutory sectors.

Developing social work skills for employment

Effective communication skills are vitally important and employers expect Universities to teach these to social work students in preparation for their future professional roles. The following film demonstrates how, using an enquiry-based learning design, students at Birmingham are provided with a broad range of learning and teaching approaches to develop their knowledge around their discipline as well as learning team working, problem solving and critical thinking skills in a safe environment. What this distinctive approach also demonstrates is the commitment Birmingham has to ensure that social work students are as well prepared as possible for the reality of a 21st Century work environment.

So what makes a social worker in terms of knowledge, skills and attributes?

Here are three short video clips illustrating how Gary Hickman, our Director of Social Work Education and the Social Work staff group work very hard to ensure our programme enables students to develop the attributes of a Social Worker, alongside some very valuable transferrable skills for practical application in the workplace.

Gary also delivers sessions to all final year students, aimed at developing specific knowledge and skills around applying for social work posts. This specific input, together with the academic teaching and high quality practice learning, means that we develop social work graduates, whom we know employers find very attractive even when competing against social workers with several years post-qualifying experience.