Health and Social Care

The award is relevant for you if you are looking to enhance your skills portfolio and anyone who is considering a career within Health and Social Care. The award provides you with pertinent and valuable skills which can be applied in many living contexts

These qualifications aim to address gaps in your knowledge and to improve an understanding of mental health questions in young people. The inaccuracies surrounding perceptions of mental healthcare are addressed and this course will provide you with information to promote understanding and equip you with positive coping strategies to improve and maintain mental health and wellbeing.

The award aims to:

• reduce the stigma surrounding mental health in young people
• provide healthy coping strategies
• promote knowledge of the impact of mental health on behaviour dispelling myths surrounding mental health
• promote understanding of positive and negative impacts on mental health helping individuals to make the right choices
• promote an understanding of the potential uses and impact of social media and the internet and create resilience

There are no set pre-entry requirements for this award however as a National 5 course we would expect you to be working at that level in school.

Written/oral/e-assessment

The course has three units which you work through over the year. You will have some lectures and complete some independent supervised work on our virtual learning environment, MyLearning. The first unit explores the meaning of the terms mental health and mental illness, investigating the various forms of mental illness. The second unit focuses on how mental health is affected by different factors such as the media, social media, our family situation, and our personality. In the third unit you will learn about helpful and unhelpful ways of coping with stress, and you will design an educational tool which can be used by various groups.

Successful completion of this course may provide you with opportunities to progress to Access to Health and Social Care National 4 or National 5 Health and Social Care.