Year: 2021

This is a question we are often asked by prospective students and offer holders!

We love that enthusiasm 🙂

Every module you study at the university will have its own reading list and all the materials on that list will be available to you in the university library – often/usually also in e-book format.

There is no particular ‘course reader’, although any introductory book relating to Childhood and Youth might be found helpful. This is one such recent text from our EDU1025 ‘Introduction to Childhood and Youth’ reading list. We also recommend this study skills guide (and study skills are well supported at the university through ‘skillshub’ and by our Learning Development and library colleagues, as well as course tutors).

So, let’s say you wanted to get a head start and begin reading up before the course began… what might you do?

There are some key websites that will be useful for staying abreast of current related issues. For example:

The Children’s commissioner’s website: LINK

Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG): LINK

Young Minds website: LINK

The Department for Education: LINK

And you may wish to keep your finger on the pulse of current issues relating to children and young people through media reporting, through – for example – looking for ‘young people’ in the ‘society’ section of an online newspaper such as The Guardian: LINK

We hope these will give you some good options for getting you started with your course-related reading.

Newsletter Oct 4th 2021

Would you like to read our community newsletter?

We are part of Childhood, Youth and Families and this is our first newsletter of the academic year.

There are two sets of standards that particularly inform our work on the programme.

These are the national occupational standards for Youth Work https://nya.org.uk/national-occupational-standards-and-english-youth-work-policy-new-document-published/

And Social Pedagogy standards http://www.thempra.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Social-pedagogy-standards-FINAL.pdf

If you are considering joining us, you might find these standards interesting!

Children’s commissioner report September 2021

“The Children’s Commissioner’s Big Ask set out to hear the voices of as many
children in England as possible, to amplify them, and to deliver improved life
chances for this generation and beyond. Over half a million responded – a record
for a survey of its kind.
We can think of this report as The Big Answer. But more broadly, it is the first
of many answers. The Big Ask tells us what children need urgently, as we
recover from the pandemic, but also long‑term. We have begun an ongoing
intergenerational dialogue, in which adults take responsibility for finding those
answers too, and for making them happen.
A striking aspect of the data is that across age, gender, ethnicity, family income
levels, location, vulnerable groups, what children want is remarkably consistent:
a good home life, a good education, a job, enough money, friends, to feel well,
to be treated fairly and to look after the environment. In short – to do well and
create a better world.”

It’s the last few days before Welcome (back) week and the process of students moving back to campus or other student accommodation is well underway. Our commuting students have been readying themselves. Pre-enrolments and enrolments are very much in progress.

We are really excited to welcome our students to the new academic year and several important programme-specific activities, are all planned out and ready to go!

And there is loads going on around the university: https://www.northampton.ac.uk/events/welcome-and-induction-week-thursday-30-september/

https://northamptonunion.com/welcomeweek

It’s really important to us that our students feel welcome and supported right from the beginning of their time with us and through to graduation and beyond.

Hello and Welcome to the BA (Hons) Working with Children, Young People and Families here at the University of Northampton!

If you have any questions, feel free to email the programme leader, Rachel, at rachel.bassett-dubsky@northampton.ac.uk 

If you’d like to check out the Open Day slides, you can do so here: Open Day slides – WWCYPF 2023 on

And you can see a reminder of the course details (at module level) on the website, here: https://www.northampton.ac.uk/courses/working-with-children-young-people-and-families-ba-hons/