Criminology and Early Childhood

Criminology and early childhood studies is an unusual but coherent pairing that reflects a genuine connection between two disciplines: much of what criminology tells us about the origins of offending behaviour, the effectiveness of intervention, and the role of family and community points directly towards early childhood experience as a crucial site of both risk and resilience. Early childhood studies, meanwhile, is a discipline grounded in developmental psychology, education, sociology and policy, concerned with understanding how children develop and how the environments, relationships and services surrounding them shape their lives. Together these subjects give you a distinctive and socially relevant education.

At Liverpool Hope you will study this three-year full-time programme, exploring how crime is defined, why people commit offences, and what happens when individuals enter the criminal justice system. You will examine the effects of crime on communities and victims, and the evidence for different approaches to prevention and intervention. Alongside this, your early childhood studies will take you through child development, the psychology of attachment, educational policy, safeguarding, and the professional frameworks that govern work with young children.

The programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and a work placement, giving you real professional experience in settings relevant to one or both disciplines.

Graduates of this programme are well placed for careers in youth justice, probation, social work, family support services, early years education and care, and community development. The safeguarding knowledge and developmental understanding from early childhood studies is particularly relevant for roles working with children at risk, while the criminology component provides valuable context for understanding why certain children and families are more vulnerable. Postgraduate study in social work, criminology, social policy, or childhood and youth studies is a common progression for those wishing to specialise or enter regulated professions.