Program Overview

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BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work Studies with Integrated Foundation Year

Overview

The BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work degree will prepare you for a successful career in working with young people and in communities across a variety of settings. Our recently updated youth work course offers you the opportunity to develop your ability to work with communities and young people (both theoretically and via extensive practice) and study the knowledge, skills and values of youth work and community development in order to graduate with a professional JNC qualification in Youth Work alongside your degree.

Why us?

• Our Social Work courses (which includes Community and Youth Work) are 1st in the North East and 15th in the UK (Complete University Guide 2024)
• Our BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work course has a 100% positivity score for 'assessment and feedback' and 'academic support' (National Student Survey, 2023)
• The University of Sunderland has been delivering youth work courses for over 45 years
• We don’t just focus on theory, but we embed this learning with practice

Course structure

During your studying, some of your learning will take place in the classroom, learning from each other and reading. However, community and youth work is a vocation, and it’s important to learn from real work-based experience as well as from academic study. For this reason, work placements are an integral part of the Community and Youth Work degree. By the time you graduate, you will have spent at least 800 hours in professional practice, within a minimum of two local community and youth work organisations.

Course modules

Foundation Year:

• Foundations of Education, Development and Wellbeing (40 credits)
• Professional Challenges in Education, Development and Wellbeing (20 credits)
• Essential Study Skills (20 credits)
• Foundation Project (20 credits)
• Practical Numeracy Skills (20 credits)

Year 1 (national level 4):

• Learning from Lives (20 credits)
• Understanding Society (20 credits)
• Principles of Informal Education (20 credits)
• Skills for Practice (20 credits)
• Placement Applied Practice 1 (Part One) (20 credits)
• Placement Applied Practice 1 (Part Two) (20 credits)

Year 2 (national level 5):

• Ethical Practice (20 credits)
• Policy Context (20 credits)
• Organisational Management (20 credits)
• Group Work and Integrated Practice (20 credits)
• Placement Applied Practice 2 (Part One) (20 credits)
• Placement Applied Practice 2 (Part Two) (20 credits)

Year 3 (national level 6):

• Supervision (10 credits)
• Entrepreneurship and Project Management (20 credits)
• Education for Transformation (20 credits)
• Equality, Diversity and Social Justice (20 credits)
• Research for Practice (30 credits)

Facilities

You'll be based at the recently refurbished Wearside View, situated on the award-winning Sir Tom Cowie Campus at St Peter's. This stunning riverside location benefits from dedicated library services and has superb transport links with the city centre and City Campus.

Entry requirements

We don’t currently display entry requirements for Ireland. Please contact the Student Admin team on or .

Eligible entry qualifications:

• If you're unsure of whether you think you might be suitable for the course, please contact us.

Fees and finance

The annual fee for this course is £5,760.

Undergraduate fees are set according to rules from Government in line with forecast inflation. The fee for your first year of study for 2025/26 will be £5,760. You will pay tuition fees for every year of study. Fees may increase every year based on the Retail Price Index.

If you're a full-time UK student, you may be eligible to receive financial support to cover your fee and maintenance loan for the full four years.

Please note, this course isn't available to international students.

Career ready

Qualified community and youth workers are in high demand. With a varied repertoire of value-based and practice-related skills, community and youth workers find employment throughout local authorities and the voluntary, charity, and social enterprise sectors.

As a qualified professional, you’ll be eligible for the higher levels of salary scales set by the Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers.

Enhancing your professional practice

An important part of our Community and Youth Work course is the work-based experience you'll gain from your placements. By the time you graduate, you'll have spent at least 800 hours in professional practice to enhance your training. As well as exposing you to a range of experiences and helping you understand the realities of community and youth work, placements are an excellent way of establishing professional contacts for your career.

You'll also have the opportunity to engage with the community development and youth work sector via guest lectures and speakers.

Centre for Applied Social Sciences

The University of Sunderland’s Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) regularly hosts visiting speakers and it can be an excellent way to learn from the real-life experience of people who already have a strong track record in social policy.

CASS is the centre for applied social science research at the University and you may find opportunities to collaborate with the academic team – particularly in areas relating to children, young people and families.