Part time
4 years
SEP
Professional Doctorate
Social Research Social Work Caring Skills
Research
Course overview
This course engages with the realities of your current work experience, its emotional demands and complexities and enables you to respond to these more reflectively, effectively and with increased confidence in your role. You are supported to design and implement a research project relevant to your area of work and interest.
It is uniquely arranged with other professional doctorates covering consultation and the organisation and systemic therapy, making for a multidisciplinary student body and enriching learning experience.
Course outline
The course comprises of two years of ‘taught’ work and a minimum of two years applied research leading to submission of a 40,000 word doctoral thesis.
In years one and two, you will attend small reflective practice seminars focusing on direct practice as well as supervision/management or education/training. You will undertake an organisational observation and engage with theory and research around the contemporary policy environment and ‘complexity’ in social work and social care.
In year one you are also required to attend a 5 day Group Relations Conference which is a unique opportunity for experiential learning about how you work in groups, systems and organisations, and how they impact upon you and your role. The cost of this event is included in the course fees.
Research methods lectures and seminars are shared with students on other Professional Doctorate programmes, making for a rich inter-disciplinary learning experience.
By the end of year two, you will have developed a clear proposal for your research, and in subsequent years will be regularly supervised on your project by an experienced team. Research continuation seminars offer opportunities for group data analysis and problem solving, and strong peer support.
Each year you will also attend the annual Tavistock Doctoral Conference where students present work in progress, display posters, and learn from the experience of doctoral graduates.
Why study with us?
The Doctoral social work and social care programme at the Tavistock and Portman is among the most established and respected in the UK. We now have many successful doctoral graduates, a number of whom contribute to the teaching and learning, as well as a long established service user representative who plays an important role in the life of the course.
A high proportion of our current and past students are from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds and many students are researching aspects of their professional experience of racism, marginalisation, migration, and discrimination, bring to the surface aspects of lived experience that might otherwise remain relatively invisible. Our staff group is diverse and fully committed to supporting such work.
Our programme is unique in its emphasis on relationship based and therapeutic practice principles and benefits from a course team who are experienced and current practitioners as well as leading academics and researchers. Research supervisors are selected on the basis of their expertise in relation to your chosen area of research. There are also some opportunities to undertake supervised practice in one of the Trust’s clinical services as part of the course or to benefit from reflective supervision with clinical staff. Our students have access to the rich programme of academic, research and multidisciplinary clinical practice learning opportunities in the Trust and events such as the Tavistock Policy Seminars.
Who is this course for?
If you are working in the social work or social care sector, are looking for in depth professional development and want to research a pertinent topic in a supportive and dynamic learning environment then this may be the course for you.
For this course (per year)
£5,580
For this course (per year)
£11,160
In order to undertake this course, we ask that you: have a masters degree and either a social work qualification and at least two years post qualifying experience OR substantial experience working in the health and social care sector.