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Health & Social Care

'An important part of meeting needs is ensuring that the quality and spread of vocational provision meets the requirements of the business and industries it serves.'
                                                            Extract from 'Success for All' 14-19 education White Paper
Health and Social Care has been designed to form a broad background for students looking to work with the public, or who may want a specific career in health, social care or early year’s services. Even for students entering this subject undecided on their future career, the courses offer a learning experience covering a range of knowledge, skills and understanding essential to this sector as a whole.
Students are introduced to a range of skills within this course, such as varied presentation styles, wide research methods, effective time management, applied vocational relevance, independence in your learning, and making contacts with professionals.

The work across the courses is unit based, and allows students to achieve success through external testing and by the production of longer assignments under controlled conditions.
We offer this subject at a Double and Single Award in both GCSE, and within the AS and A2 levels.

Subject Detail

A Level Health and Social Care    -    AS Double or Single Award - A2 Double or Single Award
This GCE is related to a broad area of the world of work and is designed to allow you to achieve a high academic level of education whilst at the same time be able to link it to a vocational area. The GCE also allows you progression routes to higher education or further training and employment. It is flexibly structured to give students plenty of choice to form qualifications that can be highly individual to their personal aptitudes, interests and ambitions.
A GCE in Health and Social Care provides an introduction to the health and social care services and the skills, knowledge and understanding that will be of benefit to you in this area. They are ideal qualifications for those students who want a broad background in health, social or early years care, and any area where you might work with people. This course takes the form of units of work, which are based on different subjects within the health, social care or early year’s services. Each unit is assessed either by external assessment methods, or by the production of an assignment. This is a longer piece of work that is assessed by the tutor, then by an internal and external moderator to ensure the work is accurately graded. These assignments will build up to form a portfolio of work which will always equal two-thirds of the work you will have assessed depending on the course you choose. External testing will equate to one-third of your final assessment. It is expected that your work will bring you in touch with professionals working in these vocational areas, and you will benefit from experiencing health and social care environments where possible. This will be achieved through links with local employers, case studies and individual research.
There are several options open to you in this subject area and these are outlined below.

Course outline
There are different levels of GCE you can opt for. These are outlined in the table below.

You will see that should you opt for a double award course, you will achieve two AS qualifications, and the course will take up two option blocks on your timetable. You may not take a single AS and then a double A2 in this subject. In the courses, there will be some units which are mandatory, they must be covered and some that are optional. These optional units will give you the opportunity to tailor your course to your future career needs. The GCE Single Award AS course has no optional units.
Below is a table showing you the mandatory units, shaded, and some of the optional units we study here at St. Alban's from the full range of 16 units.

If you take the 3 unit AS GCE then you will have to take units 1, 2, 3 plus optional, but one must be tested.
If you select the Advanced course Single award, then you must take units for an AS, unit 10 and 2 optional units one of which must be a tested unit. If you take an Advanced GCE Double award then you must add unit 10 plus 5 more units to your AS Double award. One of these 5 must be externally tested.
The external assessment takes the form of a written examination of 2 hours in length and is set and assessed by OCR.

Unit Structure
Each unit is divided into four strands called Assessment Objectives. (AO). Each AO is written to allow students to demonstrate particular skills that are developed within the course. These skills are the same across each unit at AS and at A2.
AO1 - Generic information testing knowledge and understanding
AO2 - Application of knowledge, understanding and skills
AO3 - Research and analysis
AO4 - Evaluation
These skills are expected to be reflected in the student's work, and encourage independence in planning, research, application of detail, and analysis and evaluation; all skills that are an expectation in Higher Education.

Progression after the course
This course is designed to develop your confidence and enable you to access a wide range of health, social care, and early year's environments. Health and social care is a fast growing skills such as initiative, teamwork, problem-solving, research and good time management combined with work-related knowledge gained from an Advanced course means that you would be well prepared for progression into either higher education, such as a degree course, and/or further training, or employment.

Employment
These specifications are designed to offer you the opportunity to develop the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to prepare you for entry into employment within a wide range of health, social care and early year’s environments. You may go onto undertake further part-time study with the support of your employer.

Further Qualifications
You could go on to further study in HND or degree level courses in health and social care related subjects.

After the course - a summary
The GCE AS and A level courses at single or double award is part of a national structure. Students may go on to employment of on to further study of the subject in an HND or a degree in a related subject.
Successful students will be typically suitable for recruitment in:
Early years teaching,
Nursery Work
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Nursing
Speech therapy
Social or welfare work
Midwifery


GCSE Double and Single Award
Introduction
During Key Stage 4 or sooner, many young people form a clear interest in the world of work and in turn, gain an interest in vocational learning. The new GCSE to be introduced in September 2009 has been designed to provide young people with the opportunity to explore this area in a distinctive and innovative way - by developing knowledge and understanding of this particular vocational area and sharpening investigative and research, creative and entrepreneurial skills within a vocational context. This qualification will provide the same standards and rigour as existing GCSE's.
The fundamental philosophy of this specification is that students should actively experience the health, social care and the early years occupations in order to build up a deep understanding. This is achieved through a variety of approaches including work experience, links with local health, social care and early years employers, inviting occupational specialists to come into school where possible, case studies and research.
The GCSE in Health and Social Care has been designed to provide a range of teaching learning and assessment styles to motivate students to achieve the best they can and to empower them to take charge of their own learning and development. Assessment is designed to give credit for what students can do as well as what they know.

Course aims

Course Structure and Assessment
The GCSE course can be taken as a Single GCSE or as a Double GCSE course which allows students to achieve one or two qualifications depending on the course selected.  All units in either course are mandatory.
There are different levels of GCSE you can opt for. These are outlined in the table below.

Grading
Where the course is classed as a Double award; students achieve two GCSE's from this subject.
The course is assessed across one tier covering the whole of the ability range grades A* A* - GG. Students achieving less than the minimum mark for grade GG will be unclassified.
Where the student opts for a Single award, a single GCSE can be achieved. This is assessed across one tier covering the A* - G grades.
External assessment is available every January and June.

Progression after the course
As with all GCSE's, this GCSE can be used to progress to study another qualification in school or college, such as the General Certificate of Education (GCE) in Health and Social Care as an AS level, a GCE in a closely related subject, such as Biology or Psychology, a vocational diploma or an NVQ in a vocationally specific area. From there students may go on to university.
Examples of employment to which a GCSE in Health and Social Care might progress to include: Nursery nurse, care assistant, childminder, pre-school/nursery school assistant, or any career involved in working with the public. The GCSE could contribute towards the entry requirements for training for professions such as nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and pharmacy, for example.

Work Experience
Whilst we cannot guarantee a specific work placement, students at GCSE level will have priority for vocationally relevant placements when this is organised in Year 10. At GCSE level, students will be provided with a placement specific diary in which they can collect evidence to help them in unit A911.
In the Sixth Form we cannot organise work experience due to advanced study commitments in other subjects, but we do encourage voluntary work in and out of school hours in relevant settings. For students on a work-related learning course, any vocationally relevant placements organised here will prove invaluable in providing background detail for the units of study.