BA Honours in Social Work OU Starting Advice

danz0l

OK so i'm looking to change my career path and have looked into the potential of taking a undergraduate degree in Social Work through the Open University.

What confused me is the talk on the OU site about being sponsored by my employer. I work in the private care sector as a care officer for people with a learning disability and its highly unlikely that they would be willing to aid in my retraining venture as they would be aware of my pending move to a better paid job.

Now on the OU website it also says you can take An introduction to health and social care (K101) if you don't currently have a work sponsor so does that mean i can take that course and continue my degree without the support of my employer ?

Also has anyone ever done this undergraduate course and if so can they tell me how they felt it went, what their career path afterwards was and whether it has indeeded helped them better their career ?

Are social workers as in demand as they used to be or would i be making a drastic career mistake ? I ask these questions because i am a mature student (40) and don't tant to waste 4 years of my ever decreasing working life on a degree that is likely to have me struggle to find better employment.

As always, any advice is appreciated.

Oldernotwiser

You cannot do an OU Social Work degree without being sponsored by your employer, although there are, as you say, other courses that would be relevant to you if you're looking to improve your qualifications.

Being sponsored by an employer doesn't mean that they pay for the course fees but they do have to let you take time off to do a second placement. Is there any way you could discuss how useful it would be to their organisation to employ a qualified Social Worker? People with this qualification are employed in all sorts of different organisations, not just local authorities.

danz0l

I was afraid of that Looking on another site this could be up to 200 days in further placement over the 3 year degree ? Is that correct ? I very much doubt my employer would allow me that amount of time of and they certainly wouldn't pay for me to attend the training placements as they wouldn't recognise the worth to the company

lynzpower

I have done this course, well when it was the DipSW.

The reason your emploer has to sponsor you is because youll have 3? placements one at least 6 months long ( i dont know about your 3rd year as Dipsw was only 2) I worked for a local authority and my first placement was in my own team ( i basically worked as a SW in a specialist team within my own rteam if that makes sense) and the 2nd placement I went elsewhere in the authority to work in a different team. The alterations between roles is really important. In smaller orgs, ( there were a couple of trainees on my course from smaller private orgs - private foster care orgs) and i understand the OU puts them in contact with each other so they can swap placements with others later in the year.

You have to have a senior prac or similar to undertake all your supervision in addition to your normal supervision, I had supervision every 2 weeks with my OU senior for the course, and monthly ( if i was lucky!) with my substantive manager in post.

There is a tremendous amount of work to do alongside working full time, and any spanner in the works can really throw you. If you dont have to go down the OU route I wouldnt, it was very difficult IMV to manage this volume of work and still have any kind of life. I had a quite serious operation towards the end of my 2nd placment and although I passed everythng else I didnt pass one aspect of that ( working in organisations) I failed the whole course, and couldnt retake the year as I couldnt guarantee Id be well enough to pass the following year.

tiny_courageous

Does it have to be through the OU? There are a few unis that offer the BA hons Social Work part time over 4 years.
Remember that there is a bursary for social work students so would working part time be an option while you were studying? I did a full time social work course and worked part time and yes it was hard but it is possible. http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/Students/825.aspx has more info about bursaries.

Whether social workers are in demand really depends on what area you want to go into - I know of a lot of people who trained for adult services who are struggling to get a job, but people with child protection experience are having no problem finding work (for obvious reasons )
It's worth looking at the jobs pages on communitycare.co.uk but there are lots of reorganisations going on so it's difficult to say whether things will be the same in 3 or 4 years time.

Theboys!

danz0l wrote: »

I was afraid of that Looking on another site this could be up to 200 days in further placement over the 3 year degree ? Is that correct ? I very much doubt my employer would allow me that amount of time of and they certainly wouldn't pay for me to attend the training placements as they wouldn't recognise the worth to the company

I am in the second year of my social work degree (not through the OU ) and we have to do 200 days of placements, with the split at our uni being : first year 30 days and both second and third years 85 days.
My husband is at a different uni from me and they just do two lots of 100 hundred days.

danz0l

Thanks for the help guys so far.

The reason for opting to the OU idea was supporting myself financially by keeping my fulltime employment. Having 200 days off onto placement over 3 years would be near on impossible for them to swallow knowing that i won't stay in the organisation when qualified due to them not in a position to pay for a social worker.

I have given thought to either parttime attended uni study or even fulltime uni study but not sure how i would support myself finiacially. As said i'm 40, married and two children and have all the family expenses one would expect. A friend has gone down that route by studying law part time and working weekends and only got a £2500 grant making his incomings just £600 a month. I have rent to pay of £400 before we start so that option does seem scary.

If anyone can explain a little about the grant process maybe it would help me decide better as i have no idea what to expect finiance wise. My wife works 40 hours a week and brings home £12500 before stopages yearly, i currently do the same and my wage payes the bills whilst hers is used for food, clothing etc. Going into part time education would half my wage (at least) so am unsure how i would survive. Hence the very real reason why the OU looked so attractive, study and still work fulltime. Again i need some real world examples here and what is likely i could apply for and the figues i could be looking at.

Any help appreciated

Theboys!

You will be entitled to a non repayable bursary of £4500 per year, you can find information on this on http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/825.aspx

Plus you can get a student loan (assuming you have not already had one) this will include a fee loan of about £3250 per year and then the main student loan.
I think the basic loan is worth about £3500 per year, however, it is means tested and can also be bulked out by grants. Making it worth considerably more for example in my case where we are a dual student household.

There are a few people in my class that have to work as well and have managed it even on placement, however this was made up of evening and weekend work is this something you could consider?

Theboys!

Oh sorry I missed the part about you having children. The loans/ bursary are means tested so would not be counted as income . This meant in our case as I started my degree a year before my husband did , that our tax credits etc were not affected by my loans .

I would imagine this means your wife could claim working tax credits on her earnings if you gave up work.?

danz0l

Theboys! wrote: »

Oh sorry I missed the part about you having children. The loans/ bursary are means tested so would not be counted as income . This meant in our case as I started my degree a year before my husband did , that our tax credits etc were not affected by my loans .

I would imagine this means your wife could claim working tax credits on her earnings if you gave up work.?

Thanks so much for your help, its very much appreciated (the same to all that respond).


I'm new to all this so would student loans be repayable and bursaries not ? It sounds like finiancially i could be running up huge debt to study but then i guess thats the price i would pay to further my career.

Working part time is certainly an option i would consider so thats not an issue.

This could all be academic however as i live in Bridlington is East Yorkshire and it looks like neither Hull or Scarborough Uni's carry or run the BA Social Worker degree but i'll keep looking.

EDIT:: It DOES look like hull do an undergraduate course in Social Work so thats good news.

Theboys!

Yes that's right the bursary and grants are non- repayable but the loans are.

However I just close my eyes and do not think of the debt:rolleyes:

No really, the student loan debt you amass is only re- payable when you earn over 15K- earn under that and you don't repay it.

It is linked to your earnings and you pay 9% over a certain threshold back. This is from the website:
Repayment example one: Jane


Jane is employed, and pays her taxes through PAYE. She earns £1,500 a month - £250 over the repayment threshold of £1,250 per month.

• Jane's repayments will be nine per cent of £250: £22 a month

Repayment example two: Richard

Richard works full time, and pays his taxes by Pay As You Earn (PAYE). His weekly wage is £350. Over the year, he also gets £2,500 in unearned income from investments.

• Richard’s weekly wage is £62 over the weekly repayment threshold of £288 a week. His PAYE repayments will be nine per cent of £62: £5 a week.
• Richard’s earnings from employment have already put him over the annual threshold of £15,000. On top of his PAYE repayments, he will need to make a repayment through self assessment. This will be nine per cent of £2,500: £225 for the year.

I have been very strict and have not gone down the route of student overdrafts/credit cards meaning that although I will have a shockingly large debt, it is all from the student loans company and therefore perfectly manageable.

Also as I am a mature student the likely chances are it won't get paid in full anyway as it gets written off at the age of 65.