Studying at ARU: Working with Children, Families and Communities degree

Having started to train as a mental health nurse, Naomi switched to studying Working with Children, Families and Communities at ARU. Here, she explains why the course's focus on community support appealed to her, and shares some useful resources.

A focus on community support

This course attracted me due to wanting to work with young people and their families in more of a community setting, rather than being a nurse in a hospital. So far, I have been thoroughly enjoying the course.

The line of career I am looking into when I graduate is being a safeguarder in secondary schools, and this degree will give me the knowledge and capability to move towards this goal.

What we study

On this course, we look into the history of childhood, different theories that have developed on childhood over the years, safeguarding in children, different roles played in a child’s life and so many more subjects.

One of the highlights so far from the course is that we have had the opportunity to complete a safeguarding award with the NSPCC that the University has funded for us, which has enhanced my knowledge and understanding as well as opening up more opportunities for me.

I’m looking forward to studying our mental health module as this is something that really interests me and is another key factor that drew me into this course.

Support from lecturers

The lecturers have been so supportive of our studies, whether it’s answering questions, organising one-to-ones to support our needs, providing feedback on work, tutorials, or assignment support. I can’t fault them for the help they have given. It's made studying less stressful knowing that there’s help available should we need it.

Studying Working with Children, Families and Communities is a decision that I am glad I made and I’m looking forward to continuing with this course and coming closer to my future goal.

Useful study resources

One really helpful resource that I have found is the NPSCC website. They provide a lot of insight on keeping children safe and safeguarding which is extremely helpful to reference and understand when writing assignments. As mentioned above, we also have the opportunity to complete a safeguarding award through the NSPCC, which is a great opportunity!

There are many textbooks that provide insight into different theories that we need to know and reference. We are able to buy textbooks for ourselves, some can be found online or we can borrow them from the University Library.

Some of the textbooks that I have found to be useful so far are:

• Poverty by Ruth Lister
• Social Work and Poverty by Lester Parrott
• Social Work by Jan Fook

Sometimes, documentaries correlate with a topic we are studying. One of the documentaries we have been recommended is The Walk In on ITV.

As well as this, we can access lecture materials through Canvas (ARU's learning management system) at any time, meaning the work is always available for us to go over again.

By Naomi
BA (Hons) Working with Children, Families and Communities student