Mayfield Grammar School, Gravesend
Health and Social Care
“You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat person, I guarantee you, you will win, no matter what the outcome”
Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams
We aim to equip our students with the ability to discover the impact of positive and negative human development and to critically analyse how these factors affect our day-to-day lives. We will enable students to explore areas that influence how we develop throughout life stages and in turn raise expectations of how we can live successful and healthy lives now and in our future. Understanding the different values of care within health and social care are developed to enable students to learn how to work within any health or social environment, and why each one is important. Students will be encouraged to do further research into the different settings and roles within those settings relating them to various health conditions. Health and Social Care promotes opportunities for students to draw from case studies and opportunities to undertake research to complement learning and develop skills that will be used throughout their lives. These skills encourage students to think deeper and to challenge the way they perceive the world we live in. Furthermore, highlighting how human relationships, physical environment and socio-economic status may influence how they develop. Through the investigation of health and well-being and how our lifestyle choices affect how healthy we are, students will access different resources and external agency advice and guidance that encourages them to talk about areas and raise awareness of signs and symptoms of abuse, addiction, illness, and mental health.
Key Concepts
- Develop key skills that prove aptitude in health and social care such as interpreting data to assess an individual’s health.
- Process effective ways of working in health and social care such as relationship contexts and theories of communication.
- Develop attitudes that are considered most important in health and social care, including the values of care that are vitally important in the sector, and the opportunity to practice the application of these.
- Gain knowledge that underpins effective use of skills, process, and attitudes in the sector such as human growth and development, health and social care services and factors affecting people’s health and well-being as well as developing an understanding of essential legislation designed to protect service users.
- Development of core knowledge and understanding of the human body, how people deal with major life events, health, and social care services.
- Development and application of skills such as practical demonstration of values of care together with the ability to reflect on own performance.
- Reflective practice through the development of skills and techniques that allow learners to respond to feedback and identify areas for improvement using relevant presentation techniques.
Key Skills
- Concise written communication skills, including the correct use of subject specific terminology.
- The ability to apply concepts, theories and research finding to health and social care case studies and scenarios.
- Evaluation and analytical skills
- Being able to use quantitative and qualitative data in analytical responses
- Debating and discussion skills in relation to topical case studies.
What is taught?
Health and Social Care is taught in Year 12 and 13. The exam board we follow is OCR (www.OCR.org.uk) and the course is a Cambridge Technical Level 3 – Extended Certificate. This is a demanding course that requires learners to undertake several external examinations alongside coursework tasks, there is a high workload with deadlines that must be met. Students will be formally assessed at the end of each topic. They will also complete an external exam at the end of each examined unit.
Across the two years of study, students will complete the following units:
- Unit 1: Building Positive relationships in Health and Social Care. This unit is internally assessed coursework and externally moderated by OCR.
- Unit 2: Equality, Diversity and Rights in Health and Social Care. This unit is externally assessed by an OCR set and marked examination.
- Unit 3: Health, safety and security in health and social care. This unit is externally assessed by an OCR set and marked examination.
- Unit 4: Anatomy and physiology in health and social care. This unit is externally assessed by an OCR set and marked examination.
- Unit 13: Sexual health, reproduction, and early development stages. This unit is internally assessed coursework and externally moderated by OCR.
- Unit 24: Public Health. This unit is internally assessed coursework and externally moderated by OCR
In Health and Social Care, we encourage the students to develop as learners. We support them by use of modelling exemplars to demonstrate high expectations, by creating an environment of confidence where students feel they can experiment, make mistakes, and make their own decisions on development of work structure. Marking and targeted feedback is given to support student improvement, to inspire challenge through questioning and to build resilience to encourage students to learn from their mistakes and use these as a platform for improvement.
Health and Social Care provides students with a range of employment opportunities when they leave school or after studying several Health and Social Care related courses at university. These include the following to name a few:
Social Worker
Child Care Worker
Counselling
Early Years Teacher
Doctor
Physiotherapist
Dentist
Phlebotomist
Paramedic
District Nurse
Midwife
Diagnostic Radiographer
Dietician
Speech and Language Therapist
Academic Literacy in Health & Social Care
- Library resources are regularly reviewed and promoted in lessons – we are developing a health and social care section with relevant publications relating to the topics we cover in the course
- Students are asked to undertake pre-reading for their lessons and come prepared with concise notes
- Students are encouraged to read articles relating to current topics relating to health and social care
Students are encouraged to extend their interest in Health and Social Care by…
- enabling students to experience the subject in lessons and using technology to expand knowledge by developing partnerships with external providers to demonstrate a variety of care settings where students may not be able to visit.
- giving a deeper understanding of links between knowledge learnt and the vocational context. In Year 13, students complete work placements within a health and social care setting or childcare setting in the local community. This supports their theory learning in the classroom and seeing how this is applied within a practical setting.
- enabling our students to assess different health conditions, probable future conditions and offer advice on how individuals can make improvements to their own health and well-being. Students will look at individual cases and evaluate developments in physical, intellectual, emotional, and social areas and how these can change throughout their life as they can be affected by life events or environmental factors.
- encouraging students to share any resources they have found useful with the rest of the class
- growing a Health and Social Care library
- visiting the school library to use Health and Social Care resources
Enrichment Opportunities
- Where possible we offer trips to local universities, examination board workshops and museums.
- Outside speakers are invited to come to lessons to speak to the students about their area of expertise where appropriate.
Careers Guidance and Support for Health and Social Care:
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/what-can-i-do-with-my-degree/history