Program Overview

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Community and Youth Work (Integrated Degree Apprenticeship) BA (Hons)

Overview

This community and youth work course will allow you to use and develop your practice in the workplace and learn off the job in order to graduate and qualify as a professional (JNC) youth worker.

An apprenticeship route represents an excellent alternative way to engage with professional education. As an apprentice, you will undertake specific practice experience to meet your own individual learning needs, as well as demonstrate the knowledge, skills and behaviours required by the apprenticeship standard; the domains of the National Occupational Standards for Youth Work at Level 6 and the criticality needed to operate as a leader in the delivery of anti-oppressive youth work practice.

Just like the practice of community and youth work, this course has been designed in a creative way and offers much more than traditional lecture and essay learning – engaging professional development is the central focus for our learning experiences and exciting curriculum.

Why us?

• The University of Sunderland is 1st in the North East for how well our courses develop the knowledge and skills needed for the future. (National Student Survey, 2024)
• The University of Sunderland has been delivering youth work courses for over 45 years
• We are the only institution in the North East to offer professionally qualifying (JNC) youth work degrees
• We don’t just focus on theory, but we embed this learning with practice
• Our Social Work courses are 1st in the North East and 14th in the UK (Complete University Guide 2025)
• The course is delivered by qualified community and youth workers who will teach and support you on your professional journey. This includes close pastoral support and the support to become a confident and competent professional
• The University of Sunderland's apprenticeship provision has been rated good by Ofsted (July 2024)

Course structure

Learning will take place both within your workplace (employer based) and on campus in Sunderland. Your on campus learning will reflect the collaborative and empowering nature of community and youth work – so expect a lot of dialogue, reflection and group work. As an apprentice, your employer based learning could evolve in some surprising places, such as around a pool table, on a walk, in a community café, or in a multi-agency meeting.

Throughout your degree, you'll have one-to-one support from a designated lecturer who will support your progress from Freshers' week to graduation.

The course utilises a variety of assessment methods including written assignments (reports, essays, reflections); individual, paired and group presentations; professional discussions; and the construction of portfolios. This broad range of assessment strategies encompasses the skills required within the community and youth work profession, allowing you to develop the relevant competencies while gradually increasing your confidence during the course.

Course modules

Year 1:

• Introduction to Community and Youth Work (30 credits) Learn about the history and evolution of community and youth work as a distinct profession, enabling current contexts to be understood through historical and developmental lenses with a focus on social justice.
• Practice and Academic Skills (30 credits) Focus more directly on the profession of community and youth work in its contemporary context. Develop your academic confidence and skills in reading, writing, group work, presentation skills, analysis of information, use of library resources, academic referencing and other study skills, to enable you to fulfil your academic potential.
• Communities, Young People and Me (30 credits) Reflect on the concepts of “self”, “young people”, “community”, and “professionalism” alongside your experiences in the workplace. Build your confidence in applying theory to practice and gain early formation of professional identity.
• Theoretical Frameworks for Practice (30 credits) Gain an understanding of theorising as a useful, everyday practice rather than as a remote academic pursuit. Bridge the transition to Year 2 while consolidating learning from across Year 1.

Year 2:

• Reflexive Ethical Practice (30 credits) Gain an understanding of workplace experience reflections, exploring the concept and practice of reflexivity. Optimise your learning via teaching inputs, workplace activity (including the development of a specific piece of work), supervision and reflection on your progress in meeting the professional expectations embedded in the NOS for Youth Work and Community Development
• Exclusion, Subjugation and Inequalities (30 credits) Focus on the impact of multiple forms of oppression, linking the local with the global and the personal. Develop an appreciation and understanding of how oppression serves to exclude and subjugate young people and communities in myriad ways. Consider how you risk enhancing rather than transforming oppressive forms of practice and how this can be resisted.
• Leadership for Emancipation: Changing Self and Challenging for Change in Community and Youth Work Practice (30 credits) Analyse the leadership of self, organisations, practice and change through the lenses of rights, empowerment, equalities, ethics and professionalism. Compile a reflexive account of your journey with leadership and create a plan for your further development and associated support needs.
• Celebration as an Act of Resistance (30 credits) Explore the complex cultural landscape in which the identities of young people and members of communities are formed and through which their lives get played out. Explore forms of resistance through subcultures, cultural movements and collective action for social change.

Year 3:

• Research in Action (30 credits) Demonstrate your capacity to undertake a research project, benefitting your learning, your employing organisation, and the needs of young people in the community.
• Challenging Perceptions: Criticality in the Everyday (30 credits) Explore how “knowledge” and “truth” are experienced using analytical explorations of everyday literacies. Synthesise theoretical understandings with criticality in pursuit of your individual, critical praxis.
• Reading My World: Professional Identity Formation (30 credits) Use techniques of reflexivity that enable you to appraise your progress to consolidate your identity and growth as a professional and critical practitioner, ready to bring about transformative change in the field.
• End Point Assessment (30 credits) Following successful completion of the first three modules of Year 3, you will have achieved sufficient academic credits to reach the End Point Assessment (EPA). Get support to work towards the EPA tasks: observation of practice with questions; professional discussion underpinned by a portfolio of evidence; and presentation and questioning.

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 .

Applicants aged 16-18 at the start of their programme must hold GCSEs in Maths and English at a minimum of Grade C or numerical grade 4 to 9 (or equivalent), or be willing to work towards achieving this before the programme end date. This will be reviewed and discussed as part of the initial assessment process.

Apprentices who begin their training at age 19 or older are no longer required to achieve English and Maths qualifications to complete their apprenticeship. Employers now have the discretion to determine whether these qualifications are necessary for their apprentices' roles. They may choose to include them as an entry requirement or integrate them into the training programme if considered relevant.

As well as meeting these academic requirements, you must be employed for a minimum of 30 hours per week in a youth work setting where you have day-to-day contact with young people, as well as a breadth of learning opportunities across the full range of knowledge, skills and behaviours within the apprenticeship standard.

It is recommended that you have completed a minimum of 100 hours of practical work with young people and/or communities prior to starting the course.

Fees and finance

Larger organisations can use their apprenticeship levy and government top-up to pay tuition and professional fees of higher apprenticeships. For smaller employers, the government pays 95%, with the remainder co-invested by the business.

For a discussion around your specific requirements please call or email .

This information was correct at the time of publication.

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.