*Please note: Applicants must be employed in a health or care setting for a minimum of 30 hours per week. If you aren’t in relevant employment, you could apply to do this course as part of an apprenticeship instead. Find out more by searching for 'assistant practitioner apprenticeship' on the University Centre Somerset website.
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Assistant Practitioners have skills and experience in a particular area of clinical practice. Although they are not registered practitioners, they have a higher level of skill through their experience and training and work across both the NHS and other areas of healthcare services.
This Foundation Degree is designed for those working across mental health services. You will be supporting individuals experiencing a wide range of mental health conditions in both community and inpatient settings. You will develop the knowledge and skills to provide compassionate, recovery-focused care that promotes resilience and wellbeing.
You will explore mental health across the lifespan, including early intervention, crisis support, and long-term management. The course places strong emphasis on communication, safeguarding, and reducing stigma.
Learning occurs in the workplace and draws on your current employment experience. This enables you to gain, develop and demonstrate the additional theoretical, practical and professional knowledge and skills required by an Assistant Practitioner, supporting you to deliver enhanced care to your patients.
Modules may include:
Developing your Clinical Practice in Mental Health 1
The Management of Risk for Mental Health
Developing your Clinical Practice in Mental Health 2
The Principles of Professional Assessment for Mental Health.
This Higher Technical Qualification is approved against occupational standards decided by employers.
Learn more about Higher Technical QualificationsAssessments are a mix of written assignments, presentations and exams.
To work as a teacher at a state school in England or Wales, you will need to achieve qualified teacher status (QTS). This is offered on this course for the following level:
This course is available in Clearing. If you have submitted an application, you can add this course. If you haven’t sent us an application yet, you can do this until 24th September 2026.
This is the equal consideration deadline. You can still apply after this date, but your application may not receive guaranteed consideration.
University Centre Somerset has participated in the Teaching Excellence Framework. These ratings were awarded in 2023, for four years.
See why these ratings were awarded
What does this TEF outcome mean?
The following entry points are available for this course:
Typically entrants will possess:
Applicants must be employed in a health or care setting for a minimum of 30 hours per week.
At UCS, we recognise an individual’s potential to succeed and flourish. In order to do this, we consider qualifications and experience in the context of each applicant’s background. We make offers based on evidence that suggests a student’s suitability to succeed on their chosen course of study. As such, where appropriate, we will consider making a contextual offer to study with us to recognise life experience and potential, as well as previous academic achievement.
This section shows the range of grades that students who received offers were previously accepted on to this course with (learn more).
It is designed to support your research but does not guarantee whether you will or won't get a place.
Admissions teams consider various factors, including interviews, subject requirements, and entrance tests. Check all course entry requirements for eligibility.
We are unable to show previous accepted grades for this course. This could be because the course is new, it's a postgraduate course, there isn't enough historical data, or the provider has opted out of sharing their entry grades data for this course - learn more.
This report uses your grades to show how students with similar results have done when applying to this course in the past. Sometimes, there isn’t data for every possible set of grades. When that happens, universities and colleges occasionally fill in the gaps for sets of grades that are typically accepted.
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Tuition fee status depends on a number of criteria and varies according to where in the UK you will study. For further guidance on the criteria for home or overseas tuition fees, please refer to the UKCISA website.
Subject to the maximum fee limits set out in regulations, we will review the fees and may increase them in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI-X)
Email:ucsadmissions@ucscollegegroup.ac.uk
Phone:01278 441373
Email:info@somerset.ac.uk
Phone:01278 441234
Wellington Road
Taunton
Somerset
TA1 5AX
At University Centre Somerset
