Health and Social Care with Foundation Year

Health and Social Care is a field concerned with how people access support, maintain wellbeing, and navigate the services designed to help them at every stage of life. It draws on sociology, psychology, public health, and social policy to examine how individuals experience care, how institutions deliver it, and how structural factors such as poverty, inequality, and geography shape health outcomes across different communities. Studying this subject gives you both an analytical framework for understanding care systems and a practical grounding in how those systems can be improved.

This programme at Birkbeck College is offered with a foundation year, giving you an additional year of structured academic preparation before you move into the main degree. This is particularly valuable if you are returning to education, coming from a non-traditional background, or simply want to build confidence in academic reading, writing, and research before tackling the full degree curriculum. Over the four years of study, you will explore topics including health inequalities, safeguarding, the organisation of health and social care services, mental health, ageing, and disability.

You will also develop an understanding of policy frameworks, professional ethics, and the ways in which services are commissioned, regulated, and evaluated. Birkbeck's teaching is designed to be accessible to students who may be studying alongside work or other commitments, and the London location gives you access to one of the most diverse and complex care landscapes in the UK.

The knowledge and skills you develop on this degree are directly relevant to a wide range of professional roles. Graduates go on to work in health promotion, social work, community care, public health, commissioning, and policy development, as well as in management roles within NHS trusts, local authorities, and voluntary sector organisations. Some go on to further study in specialist areas such as social work, public health, nursing, or healthcare management, often supported by the analytical and communication skills the degree develops.

This is a subject that matters deeply to people's lives, and a career in this field means contributing directly to the quality of care and support available in communities across the country.