Working with children and families
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| 6 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 February 2010. | |||
Summary
Do you work with children and family and need to develop your knowledge and skills further? Spanning the range of education, health, child care and social care settings, this course will help you to understand the changing nature of childhood and family life, the development of universal and specialist children’s services and children’s quality of life. You will also examine essential legal and policy frameworks for work with children and families across the UK and study important contemporary issues such as family support, children’s healthy development, safeguarding children, practitioner skills and children’s participation, development and rights.
Course content
“Working with children and families has helped me develop a greater respect and understanding towards children.”
(K204 student)
This challenging course explores the nature and diversity of work with children and families across the UK. Underpinning this course are six themes:
- responding to need and developing quality services
- working in partnership and multi-agency working
- children’s quality of life
- valuing diversity and responding to change
- challenging the ‘problematisation’ of families
- the importance of competent workers and competent workplaces.
There are four blocks of work.
Quality of life is about how we understand ‘childhood’ and respond to children, promoting children’s quality of life, childcare and education policies and practices, and the legal framework of work with children and families.
Services and support for children and families examines multi-agency working, children’s development, supporting families through pregnancy, birth and early childcare, early years care and education and primary education.
Fairer chances for all children looks at promoting quality parenting, children ‘in need’, safeguarding children, children living away from home, and/or who have disabilities and special needs.
Developing competent practice covers competent workers and workplaces, skills, intervention and partnership working.
The course is designed to meet the educational and training needs of those who work with children (aged 0–11) and their families across social care, childcare, health, education, and leisure settings. It will be particularly useful to you if you want to improve your skills and support your professional development. It should also be of interest to a wide lay audience.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course you will:
- be better informed about the diversity of children, childhoods and families in Britain today, and about the changing nature of family life and family composition; and have a better understanding of the implications of diversity and change for children’s experiences
- understand what constitutes a ‘good quality of life’ for children, the conditions required for them to achieve it, and the contribution that multi-agency services and support can make
- be better informed about children’s rights and entitlements under UK and international law and conventions, and how services can be provided in ways that meet those rights
- have a grasp of the legal framework within which children’s services are provided in your locality (England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland), and how the law can be used to protect children from harm, promote their rights, and help them to gain access to the services they need
- be familiar with the social policy within which children’s services are provided
- have an insight into the circumstances in which a child may be in need of particular services, how they can be provided, and the role you might play in providing them
- be able to reflect on and evaluate practice, promote the development of good practice, and give greater emphasis to skilled evaluation.
Entry
This is a Level 2 course and you need a good knowledge of the subject area, obtained either from Level 1 study with the OU or from equivalent work at another university. Our Level 1 course An introduction to health and social care (K101) (or the discontinued courses K100 or KZX100) is ideal preparation for study at Level 2 in this field. If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service. Advisers can also tell you about materials that can 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
K204 is an optional course in our
- BA/BSc (Honours) Health and Social Care (B18)
- BA (Honours) Childhood and Youth Studies (B23)
- 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)
- BA Early Years (B51)
- BSc (Honours) Nursing Practice (B53)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Social Policy and Criminology (B57)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Health Studies (B17)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Social Sciences (B06)
- BA (Honours) Social Work Studies (B59)
- Diploma of Higher Education in Health and Social Care (E40)
- Foundation Degree in Health and Social Care (G05)
- Foundation Degree in Early Years (G01)
- Foundation Degree in Primary Teaching and Learning (G02)
- Diploma of Higher Education in Early Years (E37)
- Diploma of Higher Education in Primary Teaching and Learning (E59)
- Diploma in Health and Social Care (D10)
- Diploma of Higher Education in Social Sciences (E50)
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 and scientific, mathematical, foreign language, musical or graphic materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way. The course materials are available on audio in DAISY Digital Talking Book format. Large print versions of the printed course materials can be provided on request. 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
Course materials in loose-leaf format, other printed materials, audio CDs and a 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 CD player, a DVD 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.
Materials to buy
Set books
- Foley, P, Roche, J & Tucker, S (eds) Children in Society, Palgrave £22.99 - ISBN 9780333945896
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’. In K204 this rule can apply to one assignment only. You will be given more information when you begin the course.
Professional recognition
You can count the course as 30 points towards the BA (Hons) Social Work degrees and the approved DipSW qualification. If you would like to know more about the BA (Hons) in Social Work, please ask our Student Registration & Enquiry Service for the BA (Hons) Social Work brochure.
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 February 2010 when it will be available for the last time. It will be replaced in February 2011 by K218 Working with children, young people and families.
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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An undergraduate course.
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Student Reviews
This course was very practice based, so great if you plan on working directly with families and children. That said ...
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This was a really interesting and thought-provoking course, I enjoyed the learning for each TMA and although the course has ...
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