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This is a four-year version of our popular BA (Hons) Community and Youth Work 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.
During your studying, some of your learning will take place in the classroom, learning from each other and reading. However, 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 Community and Youth Work degree. By the time you graduate, you will have spent at least 800 hours in professional practice, within a minimum of two local community and youth work organisations. This means your learning can evolve in surprising places, such as around a pool table, on a walk, in a community café, or in a multi-agency meeting.
If you’re already working in a community and youth work setting, then you may be able to 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 a setting which is not your workplace, to ensure that you get the maximum benefit from your placement experience.
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-toone support from a designated lecturer who will support your progress from Fresher’s week to graduation.
We caught up with Drew Dalton, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Sunderland, to find out why social sciences are a great area to study at degree level.
Explore the impact studying social sciences can have on the way you think
If you choose a degree in social science, you could be presented with a wide variety of job opportunities when you graduate. We’ve compiled a list of seven potential jobs you could go into with a social science degree to give you some inspiration.
Read about the jobs you could get with a social science degree
Are you interested in studying for a community and youth work degree but want to know more about what this means? Here, we explore what youth work involves and what you can expect from a career in this rewarding field.
Find out more about community and youth work
We don’t currently display entry requirements for United States. Please contact the Student Admin team on studentadmin@sunderland.ac.uk or 0191 515 3154.
Entry requirements are provided for guidance only and we may offer you an entrance interview which will help us determine your eligibility for your chosen degree. This enables us to consider making you an offer if you are perhaps a mature student who has been out of education for a period of time, or you have gained significant knowledge and skills through employment rather than traditional education.
Eligible entry qualifications:
If you're unsure of whether you think you might be suitable for the course, please contact us!
** If you've studied for a GCSE which has a numerical grade then you will need to achieve a grade 4 or above. Equivalent alternative qualifications are also accepted, such as Level 2 Key Skills in Communication and Application of Number. If you've not achieved a grade C in Maths and English we may be able to work with you to ensure that you're able to gain these in the first year of the course, depending on your experience.
If English is not your first language, please see our English language requirements.
The annual fee for this course is £9,250.
If you're a full-time UK student you may be eligible to receive financial support to cover your fee and maintenance loan for the full four years.
Please note, this course is not available to international students.
If you are not sure whether you qualify as a UK, EU or international student, find out more in our Help and Advice article.
Take a look at the Your Finances section to find out about the scholarships and bursaries that may be available to you.
This information was correct at the time of publication.
Qualified community and youth workers are in high demand. With a varied repertoire of value based and practice related skills, community and youth workers find employment throughout local authorities and the voluntary, charity, and social enterprise sectors.
We are proud that our alumni go on to work and lead within traditional community and youth work, mental health, prisons, schools, housing agencies, children's rights, and many other areas. Importantly, many of our graduates often end up working with some of the most ignored and deprived communities. Some of our recent graduate careers include “Opiate Worker”, “Missing Children’s Worker”, “Supported Accommodation Manager”, “Domestic Abuse Service Team Leader”, “Team Around the Community Worker” and “Advocacy and Participation Lead”.
As a qualified professional, you’ll be eligible for the higher levels of salary scales set by the Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers.
To find out more about what community and youth work involves, read our article, or read more about what you can do with a Social Science degree.
The University of Sunderland’s Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) regularly hosts visiting speakers and it can be an excellent way to learn from the real-life experience of people who already have a strong track record in social policy.
CASS is the centre for applied social science research at the University and you may find opportunities to collaborate with the academic team – particularly in areas relating to children, young people and families.
An important part of our Community and Youth Work course is the work-based experience you'll gain from your placements. By the time you graduate, you will have spent at least 800 hours in professional practice, enhancing your youth worker training. As well as exposing you to a range of experiences and helping you understand the realities of community and youth work, placements are an excellent way of establishing professional contacts for your career.