Âéw¶¹´«Ã½

Undergraduate courses/Youth Community and Social Work courses/Social Work

Key facts

Entry requirements

120 or DMM

Full entry requirements

UCAS code

L502

Institution code

D26

Duration

3 yrs full-time

Three years full-time

Fees

2025/26 UK tuition fees:
£9,535*

2025/26 international tuition:
£16,750

Additional costs

See all the key facts

Entry requirements

120 or DMM

Full entry requirements

UCAS code

L502

Institution code

D26

Duration

3 yrs full-time

Three years full-time

Fees

2025/26 UK tuition fees:
£9,535*

2025/26 international tuition:
£16,750

Additional costs

See all the key facts

With Âéw¶¹´«Ã½â€™s BA (Hons) Social Work, gain the skills, experience, and confidence to make a real impact in communities that need it most.

Social workers are key to supporting individuals and communities, from child protection to mental health. Our degree equips you with the practical skills, knowledge, and resilience to become a confident, effective, and compassionate social worker. You'll learn everything from social work theories to professional skills, ensuring you're ready to help adults and children in various settings.

By the end of the course, you’ll be eligible to register with Social Work England and start your career in a field that makes a real impact.

  • Industry informed teaching: Learn from experienced staff with real-world social work practice, teaching, and research expertise, ensuring your learning experience is high-quality and up-to-date with contemporary issues, advancements and debates within the sector.
  • Gain real-world insight: Get direct input from people with lived experience, including co-taught lectures and assessments.
  • Flexible career paths: Gain the flexibility to work with both adults and children, opening doors to diverse career opportunities.
  • Boost your employability: Complete two assessed practical placements in a variety of settings, statutory, voluntary, and charitable, with children, young people, and adults allowing you to apply theory to real-world situations. 
  • Build key skills: Build valuable transferable skills through interprofessional learning alongside students from nursing, criminal justice, teaching, and more.

Social Work Bursary

You may be eligible for a non-repayable  of up to £4,862 (this is based on the latest NHS guidance so may change for future years).

Related courses

Health and Wellbeing in Society

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What you will study

Preparation for Social Work Practice

Introduction to Law, Policy and Procedure

Understanding the Life Span (Human growth and development)

Introduction to Social Work Theories and Skills in practice

Practice Placement (70 days)

Law for Social Work Practice

Research informed practice

Social Work Theories, Processes and Skills in Practice

Social Work Theories, Inter-Professional Education (IPE)

Research Project

The Developing Professional Practitioner

Professional Judgement and Decision Making

Final Practice Placement (100 days)

Note: All modules are indicative and based on the current academic session. Course information is correct at the time of publication and is subject to review. Exact modules may, therefore, vary for your intake in order to keep content current. If there are changes to your course we will, where reasonable, take steps to inform you as appropriate.

Teaching and learning approaches include:

  • Individual and group work
  • Shadowing
  • Problem-based learning
  • Lectures
  • Tutorials

While on placements, you will work during the normal hours of your placement agency and may be required to attend placements 5 days per week. 

Assessment

To ensure students are ready to practice, they are assessed in their first year through a communication exercise with a service user or carer and a shadowing exercise where they will shadow a social worker in their practice with service users and reflect on this experience. In addition, you will be required to pass both the second and third year placements

Teaching Contact Hours

Contact hours in a typical week will vary from week to week. . However, typically you will have up to 23 contact hours of teaching and this will break down as:

Personal tutorial/small group teaching: approx. 1 hours of tutorials (or later, project supervision) some weeks.

Medium group teaching:  Approx. up to 5  hours of practical classes, workshops or seminars each week

Large group teaching:  Approx. up to 20  hours of lectures each week

Personal study:  Approx. up to 15 timetabled hours studying and revising in your own time each week, including some guided study using hand-outs, online activities, etc.

The timetable for each week varies and each week is made up of different activities. 

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Our facilities

Hawthorn Building

Home to students and staff from Health and Life Sciences courses spanning pharmaceutical, healthcare, lab based and social science disciplines.

The facilities and spaces in the Hawthorn Building are designed to replicate current practice in health and life sciences, including contemporary analytical chemistry and formulation laboratories, audiology booths and nursing and midwifery clinical skills suites.

Purpose-built clinical skills areas allow you to practice in a safe environment. You will receive guidance and support from expert academic and technical staff.

Recently renovated, the Undercroft offers dedicated break out spaces and study spaces allowing for collaborative and interprofessional learning beyond the classroom.

Hawthorn Building - Magazine Square Entrance
Hawthorn Building is located in the centre of campus just 5 minutes from the city centre.
A student using on of the open study spaces in the Hawthorn Building
Technical staff are on hand to guide students throughout their course.
Midwifery students have access to specialist facilities and staff
Midwifery students get hands-on experience
Nursing facilities in the building and others on campus, allow our students to learn in clinical settings.
A student in the state-of-the-art diagnostic X-ray suite, a space to learn a range of practical radiographic skills
Bertec Computerised Dynamic Postuography (CPD/IVR) uses the latest technology in graphics and sensors to enable greater depth in our assessment of people who experience dizziness.

Accreditations, awards or memberships

Social Work England

Social Work England

Our Social Work BA (Hons) programme is approved by Social Work England. Approval of the programme means that that on successful completion of the programme, students are eligible to apply to register with Social Work England as a qualified social worker. Social Work regulation transferred to Social Work England on December 2nd 2019.

What makes us special

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Âéw¶¹´«Ã½ Global

Our innovative international experience programme  aims to enrich your studies and expand your cultural horizons, helping you to become a global graduate, equipped to meet the needs of employers across the world. Through Âéw¶¹´«Ã½ Global, we offer a wide range of opportunities including on-campus and UK-based activities, overseas study, internships, faculty-led field trips and volunteering, as well as Erasmus+ and international exchanges. 

Students on this course have recently attended summer schools in Turkey, Japan and South Korea. These Âéw¶¹´«Ã½ Global trips have given students the opportunity to learn alongside students from around the world, study unique modules and explore the cities of Istanbul, Fukuoka and Seoul.

Where we could take you

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Placements

Benefit from practical work placements in settings including Child protection, Adoption and fostering, Physical and/or learning disability support and Youth Justice, which will take your learning beyond the classroom and enhance your experience and employability. 

During this course, students undertake two placements of 70 and 100 days to prepare to be effective practitioners. Placements are located in a range of public-sector, voluntary and private agencies such as hospitals, residential care and in fieldwork settings. 

You may work alongside a range of service user groups, including children and young people, adults with mental health needs, older people and people with physical and learning disabilities. 

Placements are usually based in Leicestershire or Leicester City, although occasionally placements may be in a neighbouring area. 

Please be aware that the social work placements team identifies placements for students, and you will not be able to find or arrange your own placement. Whilst we take student needs and preferences into consideration, placement opportunities are allocated based upon learning needs and professional standards.

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Graduate careers

Our graduates go on to work in statutory and voluntary agencies with the range of service user groups identified above and also includes:

  • Social work with children and families
  • Child protection
  • Older people
  • People with learning disabilities
  • People who misuse substances and alcohol
  • People with mental health needs

Postgraduate opportunities allow you to continue your professional development, including;

  • Masters in Research (Social Work) MRes
  • Health/Youth and Community Development (with or without Professional Qualification) MA

Take your next steps

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Find out how to apply

Course specifications

Course title

Social Work

Award

BA (Hons)

UCAS code

L502

Institution code

D26

Study level

Undergraduate

Study mode

Full-time

Start date

September

Duration

Three years full-time

Fees

2025/26 UK tuition fees:
£9,535*

2025/26 international tuition:
£16,750

*subject to the government, as is expected, passing legislation to formalise the increase.

Additional costs

Entry requirements

GCSEs

  • Five GCSEs at grade 4 or above including English and Maths

Plus one of the following:

A levels

  • A typical offer is 120 UCAS points. You need to study at least two subjects at A Level or equivalent (e.g. BTEC)

T Levels

  • Merit

BTEC

  • BTEC National Diploma - Distinction/Distinction/Merit
  • BTEC Extended Diploma - Distinction/Distinction/Merit

Alternative qualifications include:

  • Pass in the QAA accredited Access to HE overall 120 UCAS tariff with at least 30 L3 credits at Merit.
  • English and Maths GCSE required as separate qualification. Equivalency not accepted within the Access qualification. We will normally require students to have had a break from full-time education before undertaking the Access course.
  • International Baccalaureate: 28+ points.

English language requirements

If English is not your first language an IELTS score of 7 overall when you start the course is essential, with a 7.0 in all components except writing which should be at least 6.5.

English language tuition, delivered by our British Council accredited Centre for English Language Learning (CELL), is available both before and during the course.

Work experience

Although not essential, some relevant social care experience – paid or voluntary, is desirable and can strengthen your application with us. Work experience will form part of the scoring criteria used at your interview.

Please tell us in your personal statement, and at interview details of the length of time spent gaining relevant social care experience and the type of social care experience you have. You should also clearly demonstrate your motivations and suitability to study and train as a social work practitioner, and how your experience relates to the role. 

Interview

Applicants who meet the entry criteria will be invited to attend an interview with a member of the Social Work team, usually in conjunction with a person with lived experience, a practice educator or a local practitioner.

Interviews are currently being conducted remotely via Microsoft Teams. You will receive further guidance about our online interviews along with your invite to interview.

Suitability Declaration

Should you be successful at interview and made an offer you will be required to complete a Suitability Declaration that also enquires about health conditions. Please note that if we require a form of written medical evidence you will need to pay for this yourself. We may also ask you to attend a suitability assessment meeting.

DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check

You must submit an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service disclosure application form before starting the course (if you are overseas you will also need to submit a criminal records certificate from your home country), which needs to be cleared in accordance with Âéw¶¹´«Ã½’s admissions policy.

We strongly advise that you opt for the DBS update service as it is possible that future placement providers may request a recent DBS and not one from the start of the programme. If you decide not to opt for this service then you will have to pay for the DBS again if requested by your placement provided – the university will not cover this cost.

You must meet and fulfil all non-academic requirements before 18 July 2025. Failure to meet this deadline may result in your offer being withdrawn.

Additional costs

You may incur  for this programme, including the cost of travelling to and from project/placement locations.