Care, welfare and community
On this page
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| 7 Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) | |
| Examination | No residential school |
Register for the course
| Start | End | Fee | Register |
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No current presentation - see Future availability |
| This course is expected to run until October 2009. | |||
Summary
Why is care important in our daily lives? How does it relate to welfare and the communities in which we live? This course explores care relationships within families, between friends and neighbours, and within health and social care services. You will examine issues involved in delivering sensitive care and support for vulnerable adults; who gives and who receives care; its history in the home and community; changing notions of welfare; theories and models of disability; assessment and planning; protection from abuse; quality of care; and developments in policy and provision. You’ll also evaluate your own and others’ practice.
Course content
Anyone who is interested in understanding the place of care in today’s society will be attracted to this course. How care is experienced, delivered and paid for has implications for us all. In its exploration of care, the course draws on a wide range of materials – personal accounts, official documents, research reports, poems, images, audio-visual material, information technology – to investigate the care of adults, from individual to community-level experiences, over time and across national boundaries. You are encouraged to take a critical approach to knowledge, practice and skills as a basis for your personal and professional development. Skill development and evaluation of your own and others’ practice are key features of this course.
The course will:
- encourage you to engage in critical discussion of the values underlying social care policy and practice
- introduce the basic structures of social care in the UK
- enable you to examine the links between social structure and individual experience
- help you to recognise and define the key concepts and theories that inform social care practice
- enable you to review the boundaries between, and common territories of, health and social care
- enable you to evaluate research evidence and use it to substantiate your arguments
- help you to present different perspectives on provision and practice
- encourage you to reflect critically on your own and others’ practice.
There are seven workbooks:
Community and care sets up the debates that run through the course: what we mean by care, welfare and community; what we know about caring relationships; the shifting boundaries between health and social care; and the contribution of such values as social justice and equity to practice designed to meet individual and community needs.
Theories and practice looks at the way theory underpins and informs social care practice. Two groundbreaking theoretical approaches – normalisation and the social model of disability – are discussed, and their implications for social care policy and the experience of care practice are evaluated.
Need and eligibility. Who is entitled to care and support, and who deserves or is eligible to receive them, are questions that have dominated political debates. They continue to present difficulties in decision making for practitioners and service users alike. This workbook examines the data that determine poverty levels and examines issues raised by inequalities in wealth and housing in relation to need, eligibility and assessment.
Resourcing care. How care is paid for, by individuals or by the state, can determine the options open to social care users and practitioners. The workbook outlines the main structures, resources and practices involved in funding care at all levels, from the interpersonal to local and national governmental. It also examines the relationships between funding structures and partnerships.
Continuity and change begins with an historical exploration of two case studies: the voluntary sector’s contribution to the development of provision for people with learning difficulties, and the evolution of the home help service. The theme of continuity and change is developed in a review of the effects of transitions between care settings and in people’s lives. This is followed by an examination of changing characteristics of the social care workforce, and the workbook ends by exploring opportunities for change and regeneration in the areas where people live.
Rights, risk and control. These three highly controversial issues lie at the root of the topics discussed here. Beginning with a critical review of dilemmas to do with vulnerability and protection, the workbook moves on to consider how the language and meanings attached to the word ‘risk’ vary, and their implications for practice and care relationships. The workbook ends by examining approaches to assessing and regulating quality of life in care settings.
Working for change. Care systems and relationships are constantly undergoing change, from below and from above. Key aspects of law, advocacy projects and approaches to campaigning are discussed as a basis for understanding how change can be brought about in individual lives and in organisations and society as a whole.
Entry
You are not required to have done any study in this area before, but bear in mind that this is a Level 2 course. Our Level 1 course An introduction to health and social care (K101) (or the discontinued courses K100 or KZX100) would be an ideal preparation. If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service. Advisers can tell you about materials that will help you to gain confidence and study skills before you start the course.
Preparatory work
You will receive guidance of how to get started online in your first course mailing. This will provide you with information on using your computer for OU study and working with the Computing Guide. For example, it explains how to access and use your course website and online discussion forums. If you have time before the course starts, you can work through this and explore all the online services available to you.
Qualifications
K202 is an optional course in our
- BA/BSc (Honours) Social Sciences (B06)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Health and Social Care (B18)
- BA (Honours) Social Work (England) (B32)
- BA (Honours) Social Work (Scotland) (B41)
- BA (Honours) Social Work (Wales) (B42)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Nursing Studies (B47)
- BA (Honours) Social Work (Scotland) (B50) (graduate entry route)
- BSc (Honours) Nursing Practice (B53)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Social Policy and Criminology (B57)
- BA (Honours) Social Work Studies (B59)
- Diploma in Health and Social Care (D10)
- Diploma of Higher Education in Health and Social Care (E40)
- Foundation Degree in Health and Social Care (G05)
It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it is equally appropriate to a BA or BSc. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.
Excluded combinations
Sometimes you will not be able to count a course towards a qualification if you have already taken another course with similar content. To check any excluded combinations relating to this course, visit our excluded combination finder or check with our Student Registration & Enquiry Service before registering.
If you have a disability or additional requirement
Written transcripts of any audio components and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of printed material are available. Some Adobe PDF components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader. Large print versions of the course materials can be provided on request. The printed course materials are available in the DAISY Digital Talking Book format. Other alternative formats of the course materials may be available in the future. Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability.
If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our booklet Meeting Your Needs which you can download or request from our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
You can also find information about accessible course materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.
Course materials
What's included
Workbooks, other printed materials, audio CDs and DVD. You will have access to a course website through which teaching and library resources are available. Electronic versions of most of the printed course materials are provided on the course website.
You will need
A DVD player and a CD player.
The audio-visual components of this course are delivered on a DVD that will play on a standard DVD player and television. If you want to view this on a computer, it will need a DVD-ROM drive and software for viewing DVDs.
Computing requirements
This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave.
You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new computer since 2002 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual.
Teaching and assessment
Support from your tutor
You will have a tutor who will help you with the course material and mark and comment on your written work, and whom you can ask for advice and guidance. We may also be able to offer group tutorials or day schools that you are encouraged to attend. Where your tutorials are held will depend on the distribution of students taking the course. Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.
Assessment
The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.
You can choose whether to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) on paper or online through the eTMA system. You may want to use the eTMA system for some of your assignments but submit on paper for others. This is entirely your choice.
Assessment is an essential part of the teaching, so you are expected to complete it all. But if you unavoidably miss or do badly in an assignment, some courses allow you a ‘substitution score’. You will be given more detailed information when you begin the course.
Professional recognition
You can count the course as 30 points towards the BA (Hons) Social Work degrees endorsed by the General Social Care Council for England, the Scottish Social Services Council or the Care Council for Wales, an employment-based programme open only to sponsored students. It may also help you to gain recognition from a professional body. This course has been mapped against the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework.
Students also studied
Students who studied this course also studied at some time:
Future availability
The details given here are for the course that starts in October 2009 when it will be available for the last time. We hope that there will be a new 60-point course in the same area starting in October 2010.
How to register
We regret that we are currently unable to accept registrations for this course. Where the course is to be presented again in the future, relevant registration information will be displayed on this page as soon as it becomes available.
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