Stand Alone Module

Multi-Agency Profiling

30 Credits

Duration:: 15 Weeks
Start Dates:: September
Attendance:: One study day per week
Venue:: High Wycombe
Cost:: Available on request

Key Contact:: Harry Nicholson
Tel:: 01494 522 141
Email:: harry.nicholson@bucks.ac.uk

Is this course suitable for me?

This short 30 credit module will be of interest to people working in variety of community areas, such as youth workers, voluntary sector, youth justice workers.

Overview

This module will be delivered through specific input from different contributing schools and agencies who will provide their expert knowledge and experience from the field. All major agencies, services and examples of community organisation will be represented and their areas of work, ethos, policies, influence and work with target groups will provide the basis for comparative analysis. Throughout the module there will be reference to network, partnership and joint project workings and potentials. While there will be an emphasis on promoting an understanding of joined up working, there will also be the opportunity to analyse the particular nature of the different organisations, policy influences and dictates. This module will explore the relevance of contemporary policy to people who work across a range of agency settings and within a number of agendas that impact on practice. There will be a focus on community settings and how challenges of working in partnership can be positively managed in what can sometimes be contradictory contexts of engagement.

Practitioners from different sectors will develop broader understandings of agency working, share their own experiences as a group and then apply their findings and research to their own particular subject and professional practice in a more informed and inclusive manner.

Content

The main agency and policy agendas covered will include:

Community development/engagement
Primary health care/community health
Community policing/community safety
Education/extended schools and life-long learning
Council services/housing/social welfare
Play provision and youth work
Sports and leisure/community arts
Social services/children and families
Voluntary sector/communities of interest
Faith groups/community networks
Environmental services/single issue campaigns
Private sector initiatives/social enterprise

What will I learn?

On successful completion of the module, you will be able to:

Independently analyse the specific roles of various agencies and be aware of the ethical/guiding values attached to these bodies in relation to your own professional standards and development.
Evaluate and place your own and your profession’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to a broad setting of agency work and policy development, to formulate well reasoned and innovative strategic development in practice.
Take responsibility to collect and manage a range of information from various sources and research the benefits of developing networks and partnerships over an increased range of professional boundaries.
Be aware of opportunities and restraints that are associated with working across professional boundaries and with a range of different policy agendas and requirements.
Appreciate complex issues and develop appropriate strategies that reflect these and counter inherent challenges of multi-agency working.

Teaching and learning

Classroom time, study and assessment will draw all aspects together to create opportunities to form action research that can be directly applied to professional practice across a wide range of settings and agendas that consolidate joined up approaches. Sessions will be led by a range of specialist lecturers from different departments and complemented by a range of guest speakers involved directly in areas of professional practice. These will be structured by leading with an introductory lecture to the different agency themes and followed by seminars and structured workshops to enable you to share your specific experiences and to explore ways of developing partnership initiatives and the implications of this shared practice.

The assessment strategy enables you to produce a piece of work that resembles an extended report that follows the structure and formal demands of a detailed funding bid, dealing with clear aims and objectives, structured and logical theory and methodology, outputs and outcomes measured over time and through critical pathways, taking into account the needs of stake-holders, evidence to support need, methods of stakeholder involvement, built in evaluation and project monitoring as well as developmental phases over three years.

Entry requirements

Working in a practice area with minimum 6 months experience in an appropriate setting is required

120 level 5 credits (or equivalent)
Support of the manager
Opportunity to work outside usual practice area, if necessary, to gain specific clinical competence

How to make an application

Please contact the Enquiries Team on 01494 603 171 or email ask@bucks.ac.uk

We hope to have a fully on-line application system shortly, but in the meantime, to apply for a course, please download and print these forms, completing them fully and posting back to the address below.

Mike Thomson

Student Recruitment Officer

Bucks New University

106 Oxford Road

Uxbridge

UB8 1NA

If you are unable to view the forms, please click here to download a free version of adobe reader.

Alternatively, if you call us on 01494 603 171 or email ask@bucks.ac.uk we can post you a hard copy application pack.

Students funded by the NHS or other employer

If the cost of your course is being funded by your employer, please contact your education lead or manager for guidance as to how they would prefer you to make an application.