Childhood & Youth and Early Childhood

Childhood and youth combined with early childhood is an engaging, multidisciplinary field that explores the issues and challenges children and young people face today, both in the UK and around the world. Drawing on sociology, politics, history, social policy, and cultural studies, this degree examines key questions about children, young people, and their social contexts, asking how societies construct and experience childhood, how policies and institutions shape the lives of the young, and what it means to work ethically and effectively with children from the earliest years through to adolescence. Early childhood adds specific focus on the developmental, relational, and pedagogical dimensions of working with babies, toddlers, and young children in the crucial early years of life.

At Liverpool Hope University, this three-year full-time programme develops both the critical academic frameworks for understanding childhood and youth and the practical professional knowledge relevant to working with children from birth through to young adulthood. A sandwich year, a year abroad, and work placements are all part of the programme, giving you direct professional experience in educational, social care, or community settings that work with children and young people, and an international perspective on childhood, policy, and practice.

With a typical entry tariff of 104 UCAS points, this programme is accessible to students motivated to understand and support children and young people. Graduates pursue careers as early years practitioners, teaching assistants, learning mentors, youth workers, family support workers, children's services workers, community education workers, and professionals in a wide range of statutory and voluntary sector organisations that work with children and young people. The degree also provides a foundation for further professional training in social work, early childhood education, teaching, or educational psychology.