Leading Culture Change in Safeguarding

Entry requirements

The course seeks to recruit practitioners, professionals, volunteers or those with significant interest in current safeguarding protection practices and challenges, reflecting the needs of a diverse student group. There is no requirement for applicants to be in relevant work or to have the support of their employer. Nor is there a need to have an undergraduate BA (hons) degree to apply successfully for this postgraduate certificate. Instead, applications will be assessed based on the application form.

Learn more via the course page.

Months of entry

September

Course content

This exciting course breaks new ground. Its purpose is to find innovative ways to safeguard people’s well-being from childhood to adulthood. It brings together students working in health, education, social care, housing, sports and community organisations and across people’s life course, from antenatal care to the care of our older populations, and those keen to be change-makers in these fields.

The course encourages students to consider the implications for their organisation’s learning and service delivery. It develops students’ leadership of culture change by supporting them to integrate research, by pooling expertise, real-life experience and reflection.

Key features

• The course is made up of two mandatory modules and takes two years. You will take one module each year. The course’s flexible-and-distributed delivery enables you to learn while also striking a manageable work, life and study balance. It is designed with the busy professional in mind.
• You do not necessarily need an undergraduate degree to apply successfully. Details about admissions and applications are provided below.
• Independent online learning is blended with twilight discussion and debate. This allows you the independence of managing your own time and energy while also developing professional and social networks through our regular face-to-face discussions.

Teaching and assessment

This course is delivered through flexible-and-distributed learning (FDL). This means that students are afforded reasonable flexibility when managing their time and energy engaging with the course, so that individuals can strike a healthy balance between professional, personal and academic priorities in their lives. Learning is distributed across online learning environments and face-to-face discussion and debate. Each student is also allocated a named personal academic tutor who can support personal and academic development over the duration of the course.

The course supports you to produce each 600-word piece of writing in a four-week cycle.

In week 1 of the cycle, you engage with the first online learning activity (OLA1). This activity provides you with the required reading on a specific area of study. In week 2, a second online learning activity (OLA2) encourages you to evaluate the readings in light of your own experience of safeguarding policy and practice. You are expected to engage with these two activities online and independently.

In week 3, the student group meets together for an evening teaching session at the University of Worcester. We discuss and debate what the readings have to say in light of our own experiences and evaluations and, especially, in light of our hopes to learn from previous practice and to lead future practice. We move from independent learning to forming more of a social understanding of what change may look like collectively. We move from reading and evaluation to speaking, listening and analysis.

In week 4, you reflect independently on the OLAs, your own independent research and the key points you drew from the evening debate. You then draft a concise 600-word reflection on your own learning. The emphasis here is on synthesis of material, independent insight and personal reflection. You will post the draft to your online portfolio. Tutors can then read it and offer feedback and professional challenge. This will help you to improve your writing so that you submit only your best work for summative assessment at the end of the module.

The cycle begins again for the next focus of study.

Careers

You graduate from this course with an online portfolio that demonstrates your critical leadership and learning in cross-disciplinary safeguarding and protection work. You will have successfully demonstrated your ability to lead culture change in safeguarding. You will be characterised by safe reflective and reflexive practice. You have constructive and practicable proposals to make to human welfare organisations concerned with regulatory inspection frameworks.

You would be expected to be in a position to apply for positions of leadership and responsibility for safeguarding and protection work in a range of practice fields and/or assume additional responsibility and accountability in current employment.

Academic pathways

Students could progress towards full MA qualification by registering on other MA modules. It would be expected that these additional modules would include Research Methods and a dissertation.