Social Work

Social work is a professional degree that prepares you to work directly with individuals, families, and communities facing the most challenging circumstances, including poverty, domestic abuse, mental illness, addiction, child protection concerns, disability, and the breakdown of family relationships. It is both a rigorous academic discipline, drawing on sociology, psychology, law, and ethics, and a deeply practical profession governed by clear legal duties and professional standards. Social workers operate across a wide range of statutory and voluntary settings, exercising professional judgement in situations where the stakes for the people involved are extremely high.

At the University of East Anglia, which has a long-standing reputation for high-quality social work education, you will study this three-year full-time programme with a typical entry tariff of 136 points. UEA's social work degree is designed to prepare you for professional registration, combining academic study with substantial supervised practice placements that take you into real social work settings. Across the programme you will study human growth and development across the life course, social work law and policy, theories of practice including systemic, cognitive-behavioural, and trauma-informed approaches, research methods, and professional ethics and values.

The placements are central to the degree, giving you direct experience of adult social care, children's services, mental health, or other specialist settings under the supervision of experienced practitioners.

Qualified social workers are registered professionals and can work across local authority children's services and adult social care, the NHS, the voluntary sector, the prison service, and specialist services for people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities, or substance misuse issues. Social work is a profession with genuine career development, including routes into practice education, management, specialist roles, and advanced practice. Further study at postgraduate level is available for those who wish to develop expertise in a particular area or to pursue research and academic careers.