Welcome to the Health & Social Care Department

Health & Social Care has been taught at Coloma for over 12 years. The department has significant experience in delivering a range of courses, ensuring an up to date offering in line with developments in national vocational initiatives.

Our teaching staff have highly relevant professional qualifications and experience in addition to teaching. Mrs Dixie is a qualified social worker.

We currently offer the GCSE in Health & Social Care in Years 10 and 11. In Year 12, Sixth Form students can take the GCE Applied AS in Health & Social Care and generally progress to the A2 Level in Year 13. These qualifications are awarded by OCR.

All of our courses are specifically designed to provide our pupils and students with the knowledge and skills to equip them to work in health, social care, early years’ sectors, as well as providing a suitable platform for those wishing to undertake higher education or training in this field.

During the academic year, health, social care and early years’ workers come into some lessons to share their knowledge and expertise and opportunities are also provided for students to visit various Health & Social Care settings. These help to bring learning alive in the classroom and enable students to make strong links between theory and practice.

As a department, we also provide pupils and students with the opportunity to attend our Health & Social Care Clinic. This runs at lunchtime and after school every Thursday during term time, and affords learners the opportunity to discuss their work with departmental staff on a more informal basis. They are able to seek additional guidance and feedback, and progress their work further.

Curriculum Content

Key Stage Three

Health & Social Care is not taught at Key Stage 3 level.

Key Stage Four

GCSE Health and Social Care - OCR Code: J406 - Specifications

Course Content - What Will I Study

The range of care needs of major client groups; the ways people obtain services and possible barriers to access; types of services that exist and how they are developed and organised; the principles of care that underpin all care work; the main work roles and skills of people who provide health, social care and early years provision.
The stages and pattern of human growth and development and the different factors that can affect them; the development of self-concept and the different types of relationships; major life changes and sources of support.

How will my progress be tested and examined?

There are two units of work to be covered:

Unit 1: Health, Social Care and Early Years Provision. Controlled Assessment: up to 18 hours research and 26 hours writing up - 60% of GCSE Qualification
Unit 2: Understanding Personal Development and Relationships: 1 hour Written examination - 40% of GCSE Qualification

Candidates will be assessed on their ability to demonstrate the following in the context of the content:

Recall, select and apply their knowledge.
Plan and carry out tasks in which they analyse issues and problems and identify, gather and record relevant information.
Analyse and evaluate information, sources and evidence, make reasoned judgements and present conclusions.

Progression - How will the study of Health & Social Care benefit students’ future education and career?

These courses are a broad introduction to Health & Social Care and as such is part of a general education for life.
The GCSE allows students the flexibility to progress to A Level Applied Health and Social Care and on to a degree for students who wish to specialise.
Both the GCSE and A Level provide an invaluable foundation for any student considering careers in health care (including medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, social work and teaching.
The course content is vocational and is linked directly to the word of work; specialist professionals will visit the classroom and students will visit various Health and Social Care settings.
Students who make good progress on the GCSE course may be offered the opportunity to study additional units which would qualify them for a double award.