The overarching aim of this new programme is to enable child and family social work practitioners working in a range of social care settings in both the statutory and voluntary sectors, to develop advanced knowledge and skills to enhance their practice within their current work setting. The programme will develop students’ understanding of the contemporary children’s social care environment, current themes and practice debates, including: evidence-based assessment and intervention; core and advanced systemic practice skills; effective engagement with service users (children, parents, carers and wider family members); and ethical tensions and challenges. It will emphasise the translation of learning into effective practice through a clear focus on values, critical thinking, reflective practice and skills development linked to the student’s practice context that will be incorporated within both teaching and assessment methods. Students will be equipped with the intellectual and practical skills to engage in research inquiry at an advanced level, developing their capacity to incorporate practice research into their everyday practice and to answer complex research questions aimed at improving practice and service delivery for vulnerable children and their families.
Closing date for applications Friday 31st July 2026 at 4pm
Late applications may be considered
Advanced Social Work Children, Young People & Families highlights
All modules will be taught face to face, unless Health and Safety conditions preclude it. All modules (bar the final MSc dissertation module) will be worth 20 CAT points with 3 modules running per year, each lasting six days. Four modules will run over a 6-week period (1 day every week) with the exception of the two systemic practice module which will run across the 2 semesters with 2-day teaching blocks over 12 weeks. This is to give students time to reflect on the teaching and apply this to their practice. Students will have the option of exiting with a PG Cert, PG Dip or MSc.
Weekly lectures and workshops running from 09:00 - 17:00
Learning and Teaching
Learning opportunities available with this course are outlined below:
Consolidation of Learning
Students have regular small group workshops/sessions led by a facilitator to consolidate and apply course learning.
Assessment
Assessments associated with this programme are outlined below:
Assessment is written assignment and oral presentation, including reflective practice learning portfolio and annotated case-based presentation.
Facilities
The School is situated across a suite of three buildings in Belfast's Queen's Quarter. We provide student and staff common rooms, computer suites and designated study spaces.
The information below is intended as an example only, featuring module details for the current year of study (2025/26). Modules are reviewed on an annual basis and may be subject to future changes – revised details will be published through Programme Specifications ahead of each academic year.
Advanced Systemic Practice skills for child and family social work
Overview
This 2nd year module builds on the knowledge and skills gained in the
introduction to Systemic practice module (PG Cert). It aims to further
enhance practitioner skills in working with complexity and child welfare
concerns in child and family social work settings including effective
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safety planning in the context of risk. It also seeks to provide practical
experience of the benefits of reflective and reflexive practice for
effective practice with children and families, and the enhancement of
staff wellbeing. Further attention is given to amplifying children’s voices
and experiences in social work practice, and the student’s personal
and professional development.
Content
• Working with complexity – theoretical frameworks that help
consider the multiple factors influencing children and family’s
lives and design purposeful intervention
• Purposeful engagement and intervention with children and
families in the context of child welfare concerns
• Developing systemic and motivational interviewing skills
• Understanding children’s experiences in the context of common
child protection concerns e.g. domestic violence, parental
mental health, parental substance use
• Foregrounding the child’s experience and maximising children’s
participation in social work practice
• Models of reflective practice in social work case work
Skills development:
- Considering what is happening for the child and family – using
systemic formulation in practice
- Intervening purposefully - Systemic questioning and motivational
interviewing
- Safety Planning
- Working creatively with children and young people in social work
settings
- Harnessing the benefits of case reflection – group reflective
practice in action
Learning Outcomes
The module will enable candidates to develop:
1. Knowledge of a range of systemic approaches and applications
to practice with different client groups.
2. Familiarity with key pieces of research on family and couple
therapy especially in current areas of practice, including client
feedback and service evaluation.
3. Some basic understanding of systemic approaches and an ability
to critique their application in the light of research.
4. Confidence to effectively interview more than one person in the
room using a range of questioning techniques.
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5. Capacity to make use of systemic theory to draw together a
systemically informed intervention plan based on a systemic
hypothesis/formulation.
6. An ability to begin to consider their own personal family and
cultural experiences from a systemic perspective, and to explore
how these influence their professional practice.
7. An ability to reflect on their own learning and their positioning in
their professional system.
Skills
• Use systemic ideas to think about and contribute to their current
practice.
• Convene more than one person within the client system within
their own area of practice and interview in a way that pays
attention to the therapeutic relationship with family members.
• Show an awareness and an ability to describe working in a way
that is ethical and takes account of difference and power.
• Apply a systemic perspective to an assessment of the problem
and the need for family work, understanding the limitations of the
method and limits of their own expertise.
• Use a range of systemic questions and techniques (such as
hypothesizing and circular questioning) to clarify goals and gather
systemic information.
• Use basic interventions including verbal and non-verbal methods
to improve communication and help families to achieve their
goals.
• Identify and consider how their own personal family experiences,
beliefs and assumptions influence the work undertaken.
Social work planning, intervention and service development with children and families
Overview
This module aims to develop practitioners’ knowledge and skills in
relation to planning and intervention. It will cover the legal, policy and
practice context of planning across different aspects of child and family
social work. Building on module 4, It will include a focus on evidence-
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based practice and critically examine the current evidence base
regarding interventions to addressing core child and family social work
issues.
Draft content
- Legal, policy and current practice context of planning:
- UNOCINI pathways,
- SOS planning
- Care planning for looked after children
- NI framework for therapeutic care
- What is evidence-based practice
- Service user participation in assessment and care planning
- What works in:
• Addressing the impact of adversity/maltreatment on children
• Working with parents who have physically and emotionally
maltreated and/or neglected children,
• Supporting families on the edge of care
• Achieving stability/permanence for looked after children
Learning Outcomes
The module will enable candidates to:
1. Develop knowledge and understanding of the legal, policy and
practice context of planning and intervention in child and family
social work in NI, nationally and internationally
2. Develop knowledge and critical appraisal of current debates and
themes re: planning and intervention including:
- Early intervention and prevention
- evidence-based planning and intervention
- Human rights
- Partnership with and participation of service users in
planning and intervention to promote choice and
empowerment
- What works and outcomes-based planning and intervention
- Models and approaches to planning and intervention (signs
of safety, Integrated therapeutic framework, social innovation
fund)
- Wider environmental factors that give rise to inequities in
planning and intervention with families and children, with an
emphasis on power dynamics, poverty and other structural
inequalities including class, gender, age, disability, ethnicity,
language, culture, nationality, and religion, for example.
3. Develop an understanding of the implicit and explicit ethical and
value base underlying planning and interventions and an
appreciation on professional judgements and decision making
4. Demonstrate capacity to apply relevant legislation/policy,
theories, and research appropriately and systematically to
current work and agency setting
5. Demonstrate understanding of and capacity to independently
critically reflect on own professional role and agency practices to
evaluate the effectiveness of planning and intervention with
children and their families/carers
6. Engage with the wider concept of service development.
Skills
The programme will enhance skills in
• Critical thinking
• Personal reflection
• Searching databases, sourcing, and critical appraising existing
research knowledge
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• Academic writing at masters level
• Verbal and written communication
• Debating and listening,
• Presenting
• Professional confidence and competence
• Identifying and addressing inequalities
• Anti-oppressive practice.
The module will meet the following requirements PiP Specialist
Award:
4. Demonstrate a well-developed capacity to analyse, evaluate and
apply relevant and current research evidence including service-user
research.
6. Use a critical knowledge and understanding of service user and
carers’ issues to develop and
implement service user and where appropriate carer rights and
participation in line with the goals of choice, independence and
empowerment.
9. Develop and implement effective ways of working in networks across
organisational and professional boundaries, having confidence in own
professional role and taking responsibility for identifying, analysing and
resolving complex issues, promoting partnership and collaboration,
thus ensuring the delivery of integrated and person-centred services.
This module aims to provide an advanced grounding in the core issues
that affect children, parents and families in contact with children social
care at different stages and levels of intervention. It will cover key policy
developments and trends in children’s social care as well as key theories
and research evidence relating to the core domains of the
Understanding the Needs of Children in Northern Ireland (UNOCINI)
assessment framework which cover child development and needs,
parent’s capacity to meet their child’s needs and
community/environmental factors.
Learning Outcomes
The module will enable candidates to:
1. Understand the current policy and practice context of
children’s social care in NI and recent trends in family
contact with child and family social work.
2. Understand international and national context of family
support provision, developments with NI and associated
skills
3. Understand and critically evaluate theoretical perspectives
and research evidence in relation:
- child development and the impact of adversity and
maltreatment.
- The domains of parenting capacity and the factors that
affect family dynamics and relationships, in particular
the aetiology of child maltreatment.
- the wider environmental factors that contribute to child
and family wellbeing, with an emphasis on poverty and
deprivation and the residential care environment.
4. Demonstrate capacity to systematically apply relevant
legislation/policy, theories and research to current work
and agency setting
5. Demonstrate ability to reflect on and critically evaluate own
practice judgements and decision making in the context of
complexity, risk, uncertainty, conflict and/or contradiction
6. Critically reflect on both their own and agency practices to
evaluate the effectiveness of planning and intervention with
children and their families/carers
Skills
1. Apply theory and research to current practice context
2. Critically reflect on and evaluate own assessment, planning
and decision-making skills
3. Be accountable for own work and demonstrate a capacity to
plan for and respond to change
4. Develop confidence in and understanding of own
professional role
Semester One
• Overview of the process of audit, service evaluation, and empirical research for qualitative research.
• Overview of the process of audit, service evaluation, and empirical research for quantitative research.
• Identifying and understanding research papers and how to critically appraise literature.
• Overview of how to undertake a systematic review of the literature.
• Overview of the ethical approval process and ethical implications and considerations for research proposal.
• Present brief research proposal to peers and supervisors.
Semester Two
• Submission of research proposal (1000 words).
• Feedback of research proposal to students.
• Overview of Quantitative Data Analysis.
• Overview of Qualitative Data Analysis.
• How to write up and disseminate findings.
September 2025
• Submission of 12,000 word dissertation.
Learning Outcomes
• Understand systematic approaches to searching and retrieving literature from electronic, academic and professional databases.
• Understand the use of appraisal tools in reviewing research literature.
• Appraise and synthesise a body of literature into a coherent and robust review based on an explicit methodology.
• Identify a question and use an explicit methodology to answer it (e.g. audit, service evaluation or empirical research).
• Understand and demonstrate skills for collecting and analysing data based on an explicit methodology.
• Demonstrate skills in writing a dissertation on the project including: aims and objectives, identification and appraisal of relevant literature, rationale and methods for data collection, analysis of data, findings and conclusions with recommendations.
• Demonstrate skills of disseminating project findings and highlighting implications for policy, practice or future research at a regional event.
• Demonstrate leadership within their field.
Skills
Skills of devising a project using a specific approach to answer an agreed question.
• Skills of searching, appraising, synthesising and presenting literature.
• Skills of collecting and analysing data.
• Oral and written presentation skills.
• Skills of writing a dissertation to the required academic standard.
• Skills of disseminating findings of research dissertation.
This module aims to develop practitioners’ knowledge and skills in
supporting children, young people, and families at all stages of the
social care pathway including those living at home with parents and
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those in foster, kinship, adoptive and residential care. It will focus on
theoretical and practice perspectives on parenting and caregiving
across family and alternative care systems. It will introduce
practitioners to the Northern Ireland Framework for Integrated
Therapeutic Care (NIFITC) attachment, trauma-informed, systemic,
and rights-based approaches to care and treatment for looked after
children. Opportunities for skills development will be provided through
skills workshops.
Proposed Content:
• Understanding family journeys through social care pathways
• International and national models of looked after care provision
• NI legislation and policy context (including human and children’s
rights)
• Theoretical perspectives – the social construction of families
• Key trends, issues, and research re: foster care kinship care,
residential childcare, adoption and secure care
• Children and young people’s perspectives on care (including
subjective wellbeing)
• Assessing and enhancing parenting in the context of contact/family
time
• Effective practice for reintegrating children home from care
• Parenting and caring for children who have experienced trauma
• Assessing and enhancing parenting capacity for care-experienced
parents
• The NIFITC - core knowledge, values, and skills
• The role of the social worker in the corporate family
• Service user perspectives
• Skills workshops
Learning Outcomes
On completion of the module students should have developed the
following range of knowledge applicable to supporting children, young
people, and families at various of the social care pathway, and be able
to apply this knowledge to their practice:
1. The legislative, policy and practice context for working with
Looked After children and their families.
2. Assessing and enhancing parenting capacity at specific stages
of the social care journey, including contact/family time for
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Looked After Children, and reintegration of children home from
care.
3. Parenting and caregiving for children who have experienced
trauma.
4. Theoretical perspectives and international research evidence in
relation to foster care kinship care, residential childcare,
adoption, and secure care.
5. Application of the NIFITC to support children who are or have
been placed in out-of-home care and their families.
6. Literature documenting the perspectives of care-experienced
children and young people.
Skills
By completing the module students should develop and demonstrate
the following skills:
1. The ability to apply relevant legislation, policy, theory and
research to their practice with children and families.
2. The ability to apply relevant practice frameworks to assess and
meet the needs of children and families across various stages of
the social care pathway.
3. The ability to analyse and critically evaluate their own practice to
enhance parenting and/or caregiving and meet children’s needs.
4. The ability to elicit and critically reflect upon the perspectives of
parents and/or caregivers.
This module will meet the following PiP Consolidation
Requirements:
3. Demonstrate consistent and sustained sound judgement and
decision making in the context of complexity, risk, uncertainty, conflict
and/or contradiction.
4. Systematically apply knowledge and understanding of service user
and carers’ issues to actively contribute to social support strategies that
promote choice, independence and empowerment and which involve
service users and carers (where appropriate).
This module aims to develop practitioner skills in engaging and building
relationships with children and families across the social care pathway.
It will cover the core principles, concepts, and skills of Systemic
practice, making the connections with policy and practice
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developments across children’s social care in the UK. Module content
will cover a range of skills and mapping techniques to facilitate effective
communication, assessment and early intervention with children,
parents, and families. It will also provide frameworks to help students
pay attention to wider societal and environmental factors that impact
children and family’s lives including issues of diversity and inequality.
Students will also gain experience of the benefits of reflective and
reflexive practice, increasing self-awareness and the importance for
workforce wellbeing.
Content
• An introduction to core systemic principles, concepts, and skills
• Connecting Systemic Practice with policy and practice
developments across child and family social work
• Using Systemic concepts to help consider the lives of multi-stressed families – family life cycle, family scripts, family
structure, intergenerational patterns, and transitions
• An introduction to systemic frameworks to consider diversity and
inequality in social work assessment and intervention (e.g.
poverty, race, religion, culture, sexuality, sexual identity, illness
and disability etc.).
• An introduction to reflective practice and self-reflexivity
• Understanding and working with power dynamics within families
and across the system of care
Skills development:
- engagement and relationship building in social care contexts
- the use of mapping techniques to facilitate engagement,
assessment and intervention with children, young people,
parents, and families (genograms, ecomaps, timelines)
- understanding and talking about children’s experiences
- considering the benefits and limitations of individual and joint
parent/family-child work
- reflective and reflexive practice
- Personal and professional development
Learning Outcomes
The module will enable candidates to:
1. A basic understanding of systemic theories and principles
underpinning systemic practice with families and organisations.
2. A knowledge and awareness of the influence of the wider social
context (including gender, race, age, ability, culture, education,
sexuality) on self and clients, with an ability to consider how
inequalities and power differentials impact on people’s lives and
systemic practices.
3. A knowledge of the AFT code of ethics and an ability to use
ethical decision making, especially in relation to safeguarding,
confidentiality and consent.
4. An understanding of the practice skills and knowledge required to
convene a systemic interview, and to make a good therapeutic
relationship.
5. The skills to construct a genogram in a way that leads to better
understanding the complexities of family relationships, strengths
and vulnerabilities.
6. An ability to describe and critique the concept of the family life
cycle perspective and its application to different family forms.
7. An ability to identify and work with individual and family strengths.
8. An ability to begin to consider their own personal family and
cultural experiences from a systemic perspective, and to explore
how these influence their professional practice.
9. An ability to reflect on their own learning and their positioning in
their professional system.
Skills
• Use systemic ideas to think about and contribute to their current
practice.
• Show an awareness and an ability to describe working in a way
that is ethical and takes account of difference and power.
• Apply a systemic perspective to an assessment of the problem
and the need for family work, understanding the limitations of the
method and limits of their own expertise.
• Use basic interventions including verbal and non-verbal methods
to improve communication and help families to achieve their
goals.
• Construct a genogram with clients, using this to identify patterns
of relationship, historical influences and stressors on the family,
and to consider how these may impact on the problem/difficulty
referred.
• Identify and consider how their own personal family experiences,
beliefs and assumptions influence the work undertaken.
This module aims to develop practitioners’ knowledge and skills in
relation to risk assessment and decision making. It will involve
practitioners and HSCT learning and development specialists and will
cover the principles of evidence-based practice, implementation
science and risk assessment, as well as the application of assessment
models/tools to assist with decision making in relation to specific
issues/groups.
Proposed content
• Principles and processes of evidence-based practice and
implementation science
• Principles and processes of risk assessment and the factors which
affect decision-making
• Findings from CMRs
• Using risk assessments to inform decision making and planning
• Understanding risk assessment in relation to specific issue/groups
(3/4 to be covered in-depth):
- Neglect/emotional abuse
- Domestic violence and abuse
- Parents with learning disabilities
- Personality disorder – DBT principles?
- Disabled Children
- CSE
- Substance misuse
- Unaccompanied minors, trafficked children, and their
families
- allegations of harm made against foster or residential
carers
- Practice related issues including human rights
considerations, working in partnership, working with
resistance and disguised compliance, unconscious bias,
stereotypes, cultural humility, and the exercise of
professional judgement.
Learning Outcomes
The module will enable candidates to:
1. Develop knowledge and understanding of the legal, policy and practice context relating to risk assessment and decision making in NI, nationally and internationally
2. Develop knowledge, understanding and critical appraisal of current debates and themes re: risk assessment and decision making including:
- Social construction of risk and thresholds of risk
- Competing discourses regarding the definitions, models and approaches relating to evidence-based risk assessment
- Contextual, contingent nature of decision making and the role played by unconscious bias, stereotypes
- The changing nature of decision making overtime
- Cultural humility and human rights
- Partnership with and participation of service users in risk assessments and decision making to promote choice and empowerment
- What works and outcomes-based risk assessment and decision making
- Models and approaches to risk assessment and decision making (signs of safety, integrated therapeutic framework, UNOCINI and so on)
- Wider environmental factors that give rise to inequities in risk assessments and decision making with an emphasis on power dynamics, poverty and other structural inequalities including class, gender, age, disability, ethnicity, language, culture, nationality, and religion, for example.
3. Develop an understanding of the implicit and explicit ethical and value base underlying risk assessment and decision making and appreciation of personal, cultural, team/organisational, and societal factors that impact on these processes
4. Demonstrate capacity to apply relevant legislation/policy, theories, and research appropriately and systematically to current work and agency setting
5. Demonstrate understanding of and capacity to independently critically reflect on own professional role and agency practices to evaluate the effectiveness of risk assessment and decision making with children and their families/carers
6. Engage with the wider concepts of risk assessment and decision making as socially constructed processes
7. Demonstrate competence in the application of complex risk assessment to support practice development within own agency
Skills
The programme will enhance skills in
• Critical thinking
• Personal reflection
• Searching databases, sourcing, and critical appraising existing research knowledge
• Academic writing at masters level
• Verbal and written communication
• Debating and listening
• Presenting
• Professional confidence and competence
• Identifying and addressing inequalities
• Anti-oppressive practice.
This module with meet the following requirements of the PiP Specialist Award:
1. Apply independent critical judgement to systematically develop their own practice and that of others in the context of the NISCC Standards of Conduct and Practice, professional ethics, the principles of diversity, equality and social inclusion in a wide range of situations.
3. Demonstrate a well-developed capacity of using analysis and evaluation to continuously develop and enhance own performance and contribute to the performance of professional and inter-professional groups, teams and networks.
8. Support, mentor, supervise or manage others including contributing to practice learning opportunities, enabling self and others to identify and explore issues, improve and develop and share best practice.
Applicants should normally hold a second-class honours degree or higher. Where this academic requirement is not met, they must satisfy the programme lead that their experience and qualifications equip them to undertake postgraduate study through a written assignment.
Applicants must also possess a social work qualification recognised by the Northern Ireland Social Care Council (NISCC) and be registered with the Council.
Applicants should have completed their assessed year in employment (AYE).
All applicants must be currently engaged for at least 12 hours per week in a children’s social care setting in a capacity in which core social work values underpin their practice with service users or carers.
Applicants must be enrolled on the PiP Consolidation or Specialist Award on the NISCC portal.
Applicants are advised to apply as early as possible. In the event that any programme receives a high number of applications, the University reserves the right to close the application portal prior to the deadline stated on course finder. Notifications to this effect will appear on the application portal against the programme application page.
International Students
Our country/region pages include information on entry requirements, tuition fees, scholarships, student profiles, upcoming events and contacts for your country/region. Use the dropdown list below for specific information for your country/region.
English Language Requirements
Evidence of an IELTS* score of 6.5, with not less than 5.5 in any component, or an equivalent qualification acceptable to the University is required. *Taken within the last 2 years.
International students wishing to apply to Queen's University Belfast (and for whom English is not their first language), must be able to demonstrate their proficiency in English in order to benefit fully from their course of study or research. Non-EEA nationals must also satisfy UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) immigration requirements for English language for visa purposes.
If you need to improve your English language skills before you enter this degree programme, Queen's University Belfast International Study Centre offers a range of English language courses. These intensive and flexible courses are designed to improve your English ability for admission to this degree.
Academic English: an intensive English language and study skills course for successful university study at degree level
Pre-sessional English: a short intensive academic English course for students starting a degree programme at Queen's University Belfast and who need to improve their English.
This programme provides knowledge and skills which are highly valued in both child and adult services across health and social care.
Graduate Plus/Future Ready Award for extra-curricular skills
In addition to your degree programme, at Queen's you can have the opportunity to gain wider life, academic and employability skills. For example, placements, voluntary work, clubs, societies, sports and lots more. So not only do you graduate with a degree recognised from a world leading university, you'll have practical national and international experience plus a wider exposure to life overall. We call this Graduate Plus/Future Ready Award. It's what makes studying at Queen's University Belfast special.
1EU citizens in the EU Settlement Scheme, with settled status, will be charged the NI or GB tuition fee based on where they are ordinarily resident. Students who are ROI nationals resident in GB will be charged the GB fee.
2 EU students who are ROI nationals resident in ROI are eligible for NI tuition fees.
3 EU Other students (excludes Republic of Ireland nationals living in GB, NI or ROI) are charged tuition fees in line with international fees.
All tuition fees quoted relate to a single year of study unless stated otherwise. Tuition fees will be subject to an annual inflationary increase, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Depending on the programme of study, there may be extra costs which are not covered by tuition fees, which students will need to consider when planning their studies.
Students can borrow books and access online learning resources from any Queen's library. If students wish to purchase recommended texts, rather than borrow them from the University Library, prices per text can range from £30 to £100. Students should also budget between £30 to £75 per year for photocopying, memory sticks and printing charges.
Students undertaking a period of work placement or study abroad, as either a compulsory or optional part of their programme, should be aware that they will have to fund additional travel and living costs.
If a programme includes a major project or dissertation, there may be costs associated with transport, accommodation and/or materials. The amount will depend on the project chosen. There may also be additional costs for printing and binding.
Students may wish to consider purchasing an electronic device; costs will vary depending on the specification of the model chosen.
There are also additional charges for graduation ceremonies, examination resits and library fines.
How do I fund my study?
The Department for the Economy will provide a tuition fee loan of up to £6,500 per NI / EU student for postgraduate study. Tuition fee loan information.
A postgraduate loans system in the UK offers government-backed student loans of up to £11,836 for taught and research Masters courses in all subject areas (excluding Initial Teacher Education/PGCE, where undergraduate student finance is available). Criteria, eligibility, repayment and application information are available on the UK government website.
