Course summary

If you want to make a real difference to people’s lives, our Integrated Health and Social Care degree, which seeks to promote a holistic and contemporary approach to meeting individuals’ health, care, and support needs, could be the degree for you. This course explores how integration between health services, social services and other care providers can be promoted to improve both care experiences and outcomes for individuals. With its emphasis on person-centred care, you’ll develop the knowledge and skills to be an effective practitioner in a variety of professional roles. By designing this degree with input from key service providers, service users and other stakeholders, we've ensured that you will experience an authentic and contemporary reflection of the current professional environment to fully prepare you for the workplace. The course specifically highlights a breadth of voices, recognising, and responding to inequalities, and including a cross-cultural and global perspective of care, so you'll be ready to practice in a diversity of settings and geographies and able to understand the needs and challenges of different communities and individuals from any background. You'll have the opportunity to develop and enhance your knowledge and understanding of a broad range of professional practice areas within health and social care including mental health, physical disabilities and learning disabilities, safeguarding, and end of life care. Your employability after graduation is central to this course and you'll be supported to understand the wealth of graduate opportunities available to you. You’ll prepare for your future career through a personalised career development planning process. Practical experience is fundamental to the development of your core professional skills, so you'll have the opportunity to undertake professional placements alongside your studies, which can be in a paid or voluntary capacity. There will be opportunities for you to conduct research on specialist areas that interest you within health and social care. You'll also be prepared for leadership, coaching and mentoring roles, through both academic study and the opportunity to undertake a mentoring role. Holistically, this course will enable you to make a positive contribution to the way current and future services are delivered in a variety of roles within statutory, voluntary, and independent organisations across the health and social care sector. Courses at ARU Peterborough are designed to help you become a life-long learner, ready to adapt and respond to changes in health and social care practice in the future. When you graduate from this course, you will have developed your powers of autonomous and analytical thinking, learned the essential skills needed by employers, and be ready for a graduate professional role or to continue your studies further, should you so choose.