Health and Social Care

In the UK, Health and Social Care is a semi-vocational, semi-academic subject which can be taken as a GNVQ, A-Level, NVQ, or a range of other qualifications.

As a subject discipline, Health and Social Care (H&SC) combines elements of sociology, biology, nutrition, law, and ethics. Typically, students of Health and Social Care will have a work placement alongside their academic studies; such a placement may take place in a nursery, residential home, hospital, or other caring establishment.

Students may go on to become doctors, nurses, care assistants, social workers, physiotherapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, or a range of other related occupations.

Subject content

Subject content of H&SC is vast, and will vary depending upon the level at which it is being studied, and the individual qualification. But most students of H&SC will cover areas such as:

Biology

The biological aspect of H&SC is vital: with many carers it will form the most important area of their knowledge. Students need to be aware of how people grow and develop physically, and they may also be required to study a range of illnesses and treatments.

This may include the study of public health, and public health campaigns; for example, the effects of smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, to name a few.

Nutrition

Nutrition may form an integral part of some H&SC courses, especially in situations where carers will be primarily responsible for creating and implementing diets for care service users. This area of study will usually also include specialist diets for diabetics, Muslims, vegetarians, lactose-intolerant and other unusual diets.

Law and social policy

Students need a good grounding in the legal aspects of what is required of care practitioners, and will need to have knowledge of various laws regarding rights, discrimination, abuse, welfare, and so on.

Ethics

Ethics is one of the most important areas of H&SC: it is not enough that care professionals know how to treat illnesses and to help individuals; carers also require the integrity and honesty to put their knowledge into practice fairly and justly.

Care workers are governed by the care value base, a system of ethics which promotes equal opportunities and fairness in the treatment of individuals. Carers must not discriminate against people on the grounds of race, gender, age, nationality, sexuality, religion, health status, or any other grounds, and so students of H&SC need to learn about anti-discrimination laws.

Carers also need to be able to help individuals who feel they have been treated unfairly, or who do not have access to care services for some reason.

Social and educational activities

Ideally, care workers need to make care not merely tolerable, but enjoyable and fulfilling for the clients; this might involve carrying out social and educational activities with those in care. Students of H&SC will need to learn about how to run games, activities, reading groups, excursions and so on, so that the people receiving care get the most out of it that they possibly can.