Health & Social Care
Our Curriculum Intent
Health and Social Care BTEC at The Howard aims to enable students to discover the impact of positive and negative human development and to critically analyse important factors affecting our day to day lives. Students will explore, both academically and practically, areas that influence how we develop throughout our life stages; from birth into infancy (0 – 2 years), early childhood (3 -8 years), adolescence (9 – 18 years), earlyadulthood (19 – 45) years, middle adulthood (46 – 65) years and later adulthood (65+) years. This intends, in turn, to raise expectations of how we can live successful and healthy lives now and in our future. We believe that there has never been a more relevant time to have the opportunity to study a sector that has such an impact on all of our lives.
The Health and Social Care BTEC course is designed to prepare students who would like to work with, care for and help other people in their future careers. The course provides students with the background knowledge and skills needed by someone considering working with people in the health care sector. Our aim is to equip students to achieve the qualifications they need to build successful careers in the Health and Social Care sector such as; Teaching, Social work, Nursing and Midwifery and Paramedic science.
Our Learning Journey
KS4 Course Information
Please click here for the KS4 Health & Social Care exam specification.
The KS4 course is broken down into the following topic areas:
Component 1 - Human Lifespan Development
In this component, students study the areas of growth and development that contribute to the whole person, including physical, intellectual, emotional and social. The reflect on factors that impact everybody's life, such as lifestyle, culture, relationships with family, and consider the ways they may affect each area of growth and development. Students also study the impact of major life events that people encounter as they progress through their lives.
Component 2 - Health and Social Care Services and Values
In this component, students will study the range of care services (primary, secondary and tertiary), in order to understand the structure and practices of Health and Social Services and any barriers individuals face accessing them, and how these barriers may be overcome. Students will also learn about the skills, attributes and values that are required to give care to vulnerable individuals (such as children or people with physical disabilities) accessing health and social care services.
Component 3 - Health and Wellbeing
Students will start by learning what is meant by health and wellbeing and how it is affected by a range of factors. They will learn to interpret indicators that can be used to measure physiological health and lifestyle data in relation to risks posed to physical health. Finally, they will learn how to design a health and wellbeing plan, including short term and long term targets, and how obstacles that individuals may face when implementing such a plan might be overcome. This unit builds on the knowledge, understanding and skills that were developed during components 1 and 2 and they will revisit key elements of each of these.