Why Choose the BTEC Extended Certificate in Health and Social Care?

By studying the heath and social care pathway, you’ll gain a broad understanding of the human mind and body, and the causes and symptoms of some diseases. You’ll examine a range of health topics including anatomy, psychology, acute and chronic conditions, genetic and nutritional disorders, mental health and infectious diseases.

You will also explore the principles of the care sector from a scientific, sociological and psychological perspective. The course provides a perfect foundation and a practical pathway to entering a caring, social work or community work based profession.

Career Options

• Social Work
• Paramedic
• Nursing
• Community work
• Teaching

Unit 1: Human Lifespan development (exam)

This unit will develop your knowledge and understanding of patterns of human growth and development. You will explore the key aspects of growth and development, and the experience of health and wellbeing. You will learn about factors that can influence human growth, development and human health. Some of these are inherited and some are acquired through environmental, social or financial factors during our lifespan. You will learn about a number of theories and models to explain and interpret behaviour through the human lifespan.

Unit 2: Working in Health and Social Care (exam)

This unit will help you to understand what it is like to work in the health and social care sector. When working for an organisation in this sector, you will have important responsibilities that you need to understand and carry out. These include maintaining the safety of and safeguarding individuals with health and social care needs, making sure that you properly handle their personal information and preventing discrimination towards them.

Unit 5: Meeting individual care and support needs (coursework)

In this unit, you will learn about the values and principles of meeting care and support needs and look at some of the ethical issues that arise when personalising care. You will examine factors that can impact the professionals who provide the care and support, and the challenges that must be overcome to allow access to good quality care and health services.

Unit 11: Psychological perspectives (coursework)

In this unit, you will learn about the different psychological perspectives that have been put forward and how these approaches have influenced thinking and practices in meeting and supporting service user needs. You will explore some key ideas that will give you a good understanding of how the mind develops, and the factors that influence development and behaviours.