Community and Youth Work Studies with Integrated Foundation Year

This is a four-year version of our popular BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work Studies course, with an Integrated Foundation Year. Transform the lives of vulnerable communities. Empower disadvantaged young people to achieve their potential. Qualify for an incredibly satisfying career where you'll be changing lives every day.

The BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work degree will prepare you for a successful career in working with young people and in communities across a variety of settings, with a particular focus on personal and social development.

This youth work course, which received 100% Overall Satisfaction in the National Student Survey 2022, offers you the opportunity to develop your ability to work with communities and young people (both theoretically and via extensive practice) and study the knowledge, skills and values of youth and community work in order to graduate with a professional JNC qualification in Youth Work alongside your degree.

Just like the practice of community and youth work, this course has been designed in a creative way and offers much more than lectures and writing essays, by going beyond the theoretical. You will learn how to understand the problems faced by young people and communities and how to change situations and realities. The curriculum focuses on achieving social justice and celebrating the assets that are abundant in communities and societies, particularly within those communities that have been disadvantaged. Our curriculum covers everything from transformational informal education to organisational management.

This BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work Studies course at the University of Sunderland is the only professionally qualifying Youth Work degree in the North East and offers you a holistic learning experience which has professional practice and employability built in. It celebrates young people and communities and supports critical awareness of the social inequality that shapes lives. If you’re ready to make a positive difference in the world, the team are ready to hear from you.

Course Modules

A list of modules can be found on the University website.

Community and Youth Work is a vocation, and it’s important to learn from real work-based experience as well as from academic study. For this reason, work placements are an integral part of the degree. By the time you graduate you will have spent at least 888 hours in professional practice.

If you’re already working you can take a placement at your workplace, as long as the work is relevant and there are adequate supervision arrangements in place. You’ll also need to complete at least one placement in setting which is not your workplace, to ensure that you get the maximum benefit from your placement experience.

In the second year you’ll have the opportunity to complete one of your work placements in Germany.

Our teaching style is true to the collaborative, empowering and reflective nature of Community and Youth Work. You will be assessed through essays, group work, presentations, reports and reflective pieces; assessment methods are clearly linked to the skills needed in practice. Throughout your degree you will have one to one support from a designated lecturer who will support your progress from Fresher’s week to Graduation.