MSc Advanced Social Work Practice

This module is designed for social workers and health professionals who want to gain the qualification of Best Interest Assessor.

The module's aim is to enable students to obtain the knowledge of relevant legislation and policies that are specific to the role of Best Interest Assessor.

This module focuses on women with complex social factors, covering a variety of social and psychological issues. It recognises that specific groups of women have additional needs that necessitate enhanced and individualised maternity care. By enhancing the midwifery skills of recognition, initial assessment (including Common Assessment Framework) and care management incorporating a range of other healthcare professionals, midwives will become more confident in their role. Other specific services such as Department for Children, Schools and Families, Social Services and third sector agencies will also be analysed and evaluated to explore their effectiveness in meeting the care needs of women with complex issues, including the process and hierarchy of referral, and case conference format. Participants will be encouraged to explore, for example drug misuse and possible levels of intervention, ensuring access to maternity and other services, to reduce health inequalities and improve pregnancy outcomes.

Course aims 

The aim of this module is to enable midwives to utilise and adapt their midwifery knowledge and skills to facilitate collaborative multidisciplinary working and the integration of relevant services to support women with complex social issues and improve pregnancy outcomes. 

Examples of course content include: 

·         Those who misuse substances  

·         Recent migrants – asylum seeker/refugee  

• Those under 20 years of age 
• Victims of domestic abuse  
• Those isolated from society e.g. by imprisonment 
• Women with learning difficulties  
•  Poverty & homelessness
• Stigma

In these challenging times Health and Care services need to be developed to meet growing demands but with decreasing resources. This course explores models, theories and the evidence base to enable you to identify how to lead change within your service. 

Content 

The course covers three main themes: the external context and health policy influencing change; service development and redesign; working with change and leadership. The course explores questions such as: How do you involve service users and other stakeholders in service development? How to identify what to change? How do you prepare for the future? How can you facilitate change through people and process, creating a sense of urgency and commitment? What is leadership and how do you lead? What types of leaders are required in challenging times? How can leadership styles influence team motivation and outcomes?

This course introduces the student to a relatively new way of approaching shared decision making in health and social care internationally, which focuses on shared exchange of scientific and experiential knowledge between service users and service providers.  In doing so, the module follows the coproduction approach which has originated in social work, as well as the strengths- based approach, aimed at optimising motivation and collaboration.

Students will acquire knowledge of conceptual and practice approaches relevant to shared decision making in the context of health and social care, which are drawn from a wide variety of disciplines including philosophy and ethics, risk avoidance and risk taking considerations, service user involvement,  clinical reasoning, and values based decision making.

Throughout, students will develop their critical thinking skills, learn to use relevant shared decision-making aids, evaluate existing research, with an emphasis on developing the skills necessary for implementing their learning to shared decision making in their own health and social care practice.

This module enables you to study an emerging area of personal interest within a professional context. You will develop an individually tailored outcomes-based programme of study with guidance from an academic tutor/supervisor. The topic chosen will be relevant to your professional practice. The choice of topic and learning outcomes will be the subject of negotiation between you and your supervisor.

This module is designed for social workers and other health and social care professionals, who want to gain an in depth understanding of theories and concepts associated with the well-being of individuals, communities and professionals. It is a part-time module offering both online and face to face teaching in normal circumstances.

The aim of this module is to enable you to undertake study to better prepare professionals to integrate the notion of well-being into their practice and personal well-being.

Wellbeing has become a much-vaunted term in contemporary society and particularly in health and social care practice. But what do we mean when we use this term? This module invites students to engage in critical enquiry to enhance their understanding of wellbeing in a variety of contexts.  Students will engage in discussion and debate on the various theoretical perspectives on wellbeing and its place within contemporary health and social policy. The module will equip students with a theoretical perspective as well as an understanding of the emerging research evidence surrounding wellbeing in practice. Students will be encouraged to engage in a wider discourse of wellbeing and to explore how these notions may lead to reconfiguration of how we see ourselves as practitioners as well as the how and why we seek to work with individuals, families and communities nationally and globally.