Social Work (Postgraduate Entry)

Drawing on current research across the social sciences, government guidance, and legislative frameworks, this degree focuses on the issues that are key in facilitating your professional and academic development as a social worker.

**Why study MA Social Work at Goldsmiths?**
- This Masters programme is ideal if you are a graduate, with relevant experience, interested in pursuing a professional career in social work.

- The MA Social Work qualification is accredited, enabling you to register and work as a professional social worker.

- Over 95% of MA social work graduates at Goldsmiths go on to full-time graduate-level work. Our social work programmes are highly regarded by potential employers within London and further afield, and our graduates have an excellent record of securing employment; they've gone on to work in local authority children's services departments, adult services departments, and independent sector and voluntary sector agencies such as the NSPCC, Family Action and Mind.

- We are involved in a unique Teaching Partnership with three local authorities. This means that you will be taught in the classroom by practising social workers. Depending on your profile, interest and experience, you are also likely to obtain two social work placements in local authority settings.

- We'll equip you with the knowledge, values and skills you'll need to practise as a reflective and ethical social worker, equipped for the challenges of contemporary social work practice.

- You'll be encouraged to make links between anti-oppressive practice, the social work values, the legal framework, theories, methods and skills of intervention and social work practice throughout the course.

- You will meet service users and hear about their experiences while studying at Goldsmiths.

- The MA is an academic and professional qualification. It provides a gateway to more specialist therapeutic qualifications and research degree programmes.

Social work education at Goldsmiths has a long and distinguished record – we house one of the most respected social work units in the UK, and you'll be taught by established social work academics and associate lecturers who have considerable research and/or practice experience in their fields.

You'll cover areas of human growth and development; community; needs and services; law and organisational contexts of social work; and research methods. Specific learning will include mental health and disability, and social work processes of assessment, planning, intervention and review.

The Masters includes practice placements in two settings and with different service user groups, so you'll be able to gain invaluable real world experience. We'll encourage you to think deeply about human rights and social justice, and to embed these values in your practice. You'll develop your skills for reflective and evidence-based practice and will be able to further your research mindedness.

**Excellence in practice and teaching**
Goldsmiths has a long tradition of social work education, and our programmes are internationally regarded as excellent in both practice learning and critical studies. They also have a strong focus on anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice.

Our research informs and underpins our teaching and students are invited to share our interests as well as develop their own through undertaking a small-scale research project and developing their research mindedness in a final year extended essay.

The MA is a full-time course. It is not possible to study the course part-time. It is not possible for students to transfer from a social work course at another university onto the second year of the Goldsmiths MA in Social Work course.