Course options
Key information
Duration: 3 years full time
UCAS code: L510
Institution code: R72
Campus: Egham
The course
Health and Social Care (BSc)
Are you looking for a degree that will help you make a difference in society? That gives you a comprehensive and critical understanding of health and social care and helps building healthy and resilient communities for a sustainable future?
Studying our new interdisciplinary BSc Health and Social Care means that you will learn from leading experts from within sociology, social policy, social work and health who will share their research and experience so that you gain invaluable skills to help you understand individuals, communities and their key public health and social care issues.
The degree will help you to take a broad view of these issues, and explore them from a range of different perspectives. It will introduce you to understanding society and people in society and provides training in core areas within health and social care.
- You will benefit from academic study combined with vocational training
- Combine a solid theoretical grounding with a vocational strand to maximise your future opportunities whether you are considering a professional career or further study
- Gain critical thinking skills which will help you analyse and understand issues pervading the study of health and social care
- Gain practical skills in evaluation and research
From time to time, we make changes to our courses to improve the student and learning experience. If we make a significant change to your chosen course, we’ll let you know as soon as possible.
Course structure
Core Modules
Year 1
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This professionally oriented module addresses students’ employability skills with providing them with foundational level competences (knowledge, skills, values and agency) in social care. The emphasis within this module is empowering, holistic, person-centred, individual level care which will be contextualised from the perspectives of professional multi-agency practice, diversity and service user involvement. The aim is to help the students to engage both with the theories and practices of person-centred social care and develop their communicative, dialogic skills and ethical sensitivity. This module includes practice placement of 40 hours during term 2 coordinated by the Royal Holloway Volunteering Team. Students can opt to volunteer in diverse health care setting as well depending on their professional interests.
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This module will explore and examine how human behaviour and experience are influenced by social and interactional experiences and contexts across the lifespan. Drawing on diverse theories and applying research evidence ‘Perspectives on People in Society’ will enable you to identify and critically analyse literature and research evidence on human development and to communicate on how life events and social contexts impact on people’s experiences. You will explore social, biopsychosocial, psychological and ecological perspectives, focusing on the person in their environment. You will also explore how context, challenge and change impact on life experiences.
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The aim of this module is to provide a holistic overview of the human structure and functioning through an interdisciplinary approach which enables students to understand the interconnecting perspectives across the biological, psychological, social and environmental sciences.
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The aim of this module is to provide an understanding of the different health professional roles and how they play a vital role in treatment, rehabilitation and improving health and wellbeing in health and social care.
Year 2
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This module focuses on more advanced skills development in relation to working with risk, early intervention, safeguarding and promoting people’s social participation in their diverse social contexts. Essential social and welfare policies will be covered in this module and students will be introduced to different means of social advocacy and anti-discriminatory practice. Students further develop their ethical sensitivity by focusing on identifying social justice-related ethical dilemmas in their practice. This module includes a 40-hour placement (term 2).
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This module will introduce community development work and core concepts of power, social justice, participation, co-production and advocacy. Lectures will introduce theory, concepts and practice examples of community development in action, with guest speakers (who have experience in the sector) invited to share their knowledge with students. Seminars will introduce students to the skills required to complete a community profile and an assessment of strengths and needs in the area. Perspectives from community members will be central to the values of the module and students will learn to reflect on their own positionality vis-à-vis the members of the community they are focussing on.
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This module aims to provide students with an understanding of physical and mental health conditions. It explores the relationships between physiology, physical health, lifestyle factors and mental health and wellbeing.
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The module aims to develop knowledge and an understanding of the purpose and process of research and enable students to demonstrate research awareness and evidence-based practice to support services and the wider healthcare outcomes.
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The aim of the module is to provide students with concepts and theories of health promotion and health protection frameworks. This will give students an understanding of the determinants of health, strategies and interventions that can be undertaken at the global, community, or individual levels to improve health.
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The module aims to explore the policy priorities in the health and social care sector and the impact policy has in key areas of local, national and global health and social care settings.
Year 3
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This module will enable students to demonstrate practical and applied health and social care research skills; give students the opportunity to work as independent learners to develop in-depth understanding in a specialist area. Students will have an opportunity to submit a substantial piece of written work in which they will critically assess different approaches to research, implement a research plan and evaluate research findings. The workshops will engage students in generic research skills and will include topics such as: Focusing a research project and developing a research statement; literature reviews within the research process; and engaging with research ethics in data collection and analysis. In addition to this, students will meet with their allocated supervisor on a regular basis to progress their work.
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This third-year module builds on the previous two social care modules within BSc Health and Social Care Degree. The aim of the module is to provide students with tools to critically analyse concurrent, innovative and entrepreneurial professional approaches as future social care practitioners and leaders. The module is based on reflective practice with a focus on future-oriented skills and competencies in the social care profession. Students also examine their professional orientation, professional identity and purpose in helping others. This module includes a small group-based community research and innovation project in which students focus on solving a practice-based challenge in a health or social care setting by creating tools, models, conceptualisations and applications to tackle this challenge, run with the support of the community research scheme via RHUL Volunteering team.
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The aim of the module is to provide students with an understanding of the influence of the determinants of health, power and discrimination, and the impact on social inclusion and exclusion. The students will use social theory and lived narratives to understand social issues and learn ways to challenge inequality in health across the population.
Optional Modules
There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.
Year 1
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All modules are core
Year 2
Choose one of the following:
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This module will builds on the Level 4 module, ‘Perspectives on People in Society’. The lectures will introduce key theories, perspectives and diverse contexts for ageing in society, including family, work, care and caring, risk, citizenship and belonging. Students will also be introduced to the roles of key state agencies and professional groups working with older people in the welfare state. The seminar series will support students to gather a social history from an older person and to critically analyse this using theory and knowledge from the lecture series.
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This module explores critical perspectives on children, families and communities. Students are introduced to ideas about differing constructions of childhood through time and place and key sociological concepts in relation to children their families and communities. Perspectives on children’s rights and agency within families and communities is explored within the context of change within a globalised social media world. A critical examination of social policies, primarily in the UK, but with reference to international examples, is included with reference to the impact on different children, families and communities. The module is co-taught with SW3004 a third-year variant of this module, but with different learning outcomes and assessments and seminars will be taught separately where numbers allow.
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Students will critically discuss the role, function and nature of the family in contemporary society as well as examining changing patterns of family life. The course also explores how social identities and different social positions (for example those related to class, gender, or ethnicity) impact upon the experience of family life. Families will also be discussed in relation to other areas of social life including education, the workplace and the community. Students will engage with questions such as: To what extent does the nuclear family remain seen as the ‘ideal’ family type? What are the experiences of lone-parent families in contemporary society? How easy is it for families to balance paid work and family life? What is the relationship between the family and social policy? The course will familiarise students with contemporary research related to families and family life and equip them to critically evaluate this material.
Year 3
Choose two of the following:
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The aim of this module is for students to be able to reflect on work placement experience in the wider context of career planning. Content of the module itself is very simple, the student being responsible for their own research and reflection, as guided by the Careers Service. Required preparatory work for the course is attending two workshops provided by the Careers Service, along with undertaking of a short-term work placement.
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This module will introduce you to key topics in madness studies. We will review different approaches to understanding and responding to madness. A key theme of the module will be the relationship between social factors and ideas of madness — and the roles of key state agencies and professional groups. We will consider how concepts of madness have changed over time and how they differ across cultures. We will also explore the relationships between social stress, social division and stigma and conceptions of madness.
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This module will introduce students to disability and critical disability theory. Intersectional perspectives on disability will be included and students will learn about everyday barriers to inclusion and about law, policy and international agreements. Skills will be developed through the use of a video diary. Perspectives of people with lived experience will be incorporated.
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This module will provide students with a firm understanding of environmental harms arising from climate change from a social and critical perspective. In particular, the term climate justice is used to foreground the unequal social impacts of climate change, utilising an intersectional lens and applying this at both local and global scales The role of social policy and social movements in this area will be evaluated in terms of challenging and addressing environmental injustices and pursuing just transitions and sustainable alternatives. Lived experience and social connectivity will be discussed and students will have the opportunity to reflect on and explore their own values and perspectives on climate change. The module will be assessed via a creative narrated poster presentation and students will be supported to develop these skills in seminars.
Teaching & assessment
You will complete 120 credits each year mainly made up of either 15 or 30 credit units. In the first year all units are compulsory in the second and third year there will be some choice of optional units.
Teaching will involve a range of methods including, lectures, seminars, individual tutorials, peer group work and practical activities (such as court visits and engagement with community groups).
Assessment will involve a range of methods including, essays, examinations and tests and practical projects.
Throughout the course, a tutor will be available to you to provide advice on the choice of courses and to offer pastoral support.
In the final year of the course, you will undertake a research project and you will be allocated a specialist dissertation supervisor to support you with this.
Entry requirements
A Levels: BBB-BBC
Required subjects:
- At least five GCSEs at grade A*-C or 9-4 including English and Mathematics.
Where an applicant is taking the EPQ alongside A-levels, the EPQ will be taken into consideration and result in lower A-level grades being required. For students who are from backgrounds or personal circumstances that mean they are generally less likely to go to university, you may be eligible for an alternative lower offer. Follow the link to learn more about our contextual offers.
T-levels
We accept T-levels for admission to our undergraduate courses, with the following grades regarded as equivalent to our standard A-level requirements:
- AAA* – Distinction (A* on the core and distinction in the occupational specialism)
- AAA – Distinction
- BBB – Merit
- CCC – Pass (C or above on the core)
- DDD – Pass (D or E on the core)
Where a course specifies subject-specific requirements at A-level, T-level applicants are likely to be asked to offer this A-level alongside their T-level studies.
English language requirements
All teaching at Royal Holloway is in English. You will therefore need to have good enough written and spoken English to cope with your studies right from the start. Find out what scores we require.
Country-specific requirements
For more information about country-specific entry requirements for your country please visit here.
Undergraduate preparation programme
For international students who do not meet the direct entry requirements, for this undergraduate degree, the Royal Holloway International Study Centre offers an International Foundation Year programme designed to develop your academic and English language skills.
Upon successful completion, you can progress to this degree at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Your future career
This degree will provide you with critical thinking and research method skills, which are paramount in a number of careers.
The degree has a strong vocational strand running throughout, utilising links with local authorities and charities in the health and social care sector. You will prepare for your future career, whether you are interested in working in a professional role or undertaking future training at Postgraduate level.
Fees, funding & scholarships
Home (UK) students tuition fee per year*: £9,250
EU and international students tuition fee per year**: £21,400
Other essential costs***: There are no single associated costs greater than £50 per item on this course
How do I pay for it? Find out more about funding options, including loans, scholarships and bursaries. UK students who have already taken out a tuition fee loan for undergraduate study should check their eligibility for additional funding directly with the relevant awards body.
*The tuition fee for UK undergraduates is controlled by Government regulations. The fee for the academic year 2024/25 is £9,250 and is provided here as a guide. The fee for UK undergraduates starting in 2025/26 has not yet been set, but will be advertised here once confirmed.
**This figure is the fee for EU and international students starting a degree in the academic year 2025/26.
Royal Holloway reserves the right to increase tuition fees annually for overseas fee-paying students. The increase for continuing students who start their degree in 2025/26 will be 5%. For further information see fees and funding and the terms and conditions.
*** These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree at Royal Holloway during the 2025/26 academic year and are included as a guide. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing, have not been included.
