
Advanced practice and research: social work and social care (D55)
Join one of the most established and respected doctoral social work and social care programmes in the UK
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.
Please note: you may see the D55 course also referred to as SCDOTP003 in communications from our application system.
About this course
The course is comprised 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 five-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 interdisciplinary 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.
Modules
Module 1: Research Methods 1 (RM1)
- Year of Study: Year 1
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 30 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leader: To be confirmed
Module Aims
- Provide students with a sophisticated introduction to a range of research methodologies and research paradigms relevant to the conduct of applied professional research programmes.
- Introduce students to key debates about ontology and epistemology and the philosophical principles underpinning knowledge generation in the social and psychological sciences, with particular attention to psycho-social, systemic, and organisational applications of these principles.
- Through regular facilitated multi-disciplinary group sessions with other Professional Doctorate students, to enable individual students to reflect on their practitioner identities, research aspirations, and methodological interests and thereby begin to reflexively position themselves as applied researchers.
- Consider how applied research can be utilised to develop professional practice and contribute to extending the forefront of knowledge and/or professional practice within students’ own area.
Module Assessment
Students are required to submit a 5,000-word critical and analytical literature review on a selected research topic, which may or may not be what the student eventually opts to research for their dissertation.
Module 2: Advanced Professional Practice 1: Clinical Social Work and Social Care (APP1)
- Year of Study:Year 1
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 15 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leader: Dr Amina Adan
Module Aims
- Engage students in a project of depth experientially led learning that develops confidence, sophistication, and reflective capacity in role as a therapeutically informed practitioner.
- Consolidate and develop theoretical and conceptual understanding of complex emotional and relational dynamics, and the effective management of these in role.
- Extend professional initiative, capacity to take authority in relation to the ‘task’, and ability to work effectively with others in conflictual, demanding, and uncertain conditions.
- Enable students to plan and write up a concise, analytical, and reflective account of their clinical learning and development, evidencing ability of systematic acquisition and understanding of a substantial body of applied knowledge.
- Better understand and engage more effectively with the demands of contemporary practice, organisational and training environments.
- Develop awareness of the existence and impact of oppressive forces such as racism, structural inequalities such as the impact of climate change and the impact of socio-political contexts such as poverty, within which people and organisation’s function.
Module Assessment
Students are required to submit a 3,000-word reflective and analytical practice study, in which they describe, reflect on, and critically analyse their clinical practice, with particular attention to the use of their professional self in the process of the work.
Module 3: Advanced Professional Practice 2: Organisations and the policy process (APP2)
- Year of Study: Year 1
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 15 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leader: Dr Anna Harvey
Module Aims
- To develop the skills of close observation of organisational and social experience and facilitate access to unconscious dimensions of organisational and social life.
- To develop students’ confidence in occupying the observational role.
- To provide students with the opportunity to take up role as a member of a Group Relations event.
- To enhance and develop students’ reflexive professional capacities in relation to their organisational and social positioning.
- To introduce students to a range of psychosocial, systemic, and psychoanalytic theory about social and organisational life, and its unconscious determinants.
Module Assessment
Students are required to submit a 3,000-word paper describing, reflecting upon, and critically analysing their experience of an organisational observation in the light of public policy and their experience of a Group Relations Event.
Module 4: Research Methods 2 (RM2)
- Year of Study: Year 2
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 30 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leader: Dr Philip Archard and Dr Simon Tucker
Module Aims
- To consolidate students’ learning from Research Methods 1 with their prior knowledge and experience in clinical and applied professional practice.
- To promote students to be able to think critically and reflexively about problems in order to create new solutions and new knowledge.
- To enable students to choose an appropriate research design and research methodology for their research questions.
Module Assessment
Students are required to submit a 5,000-word research assignment, describing the research that will form the basis of their thesis and including a systematic literature review.
Module 5: Advanced Professional Practice 3: Supervision, Management and Education (APP3)
- Year of Study: Year 2
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 15 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leader: Dr Louise Grant
Module Aims
- Engage students in a project of depth experientially led managerial/supervisory or educational learning, that further develops confidence, sophistication, and reflective capacity within their professional roles as supervisors, managers, or educators.
- Enable students to formulate a clear sense of how their own deep sources of practice curiosity inform both their choices practitioner specialism, and their intended research aims and plans.
- Enable students to identify the practice themes that form a central focus for their professional curiosity, and to consider how these might inform and deepen their approach to the formulation of a research protocol.
- Develop capacities for consultation with peers through structured seminar learning methods.
- Further consolidate and develop theoretical and conceptual understanding of complex emotional and relational dynamics, and the effective management of these at work
- Extend professional initiative, capacity to take authority in relation to the ‘task’, and ability to work effectively with others in conflictual, demanding, and uncertain conditions.
- Enable students to plan and write up a concise, theoretically informed, and reflective account of their learning and development, with an emphasis on their understanding of themselves and their distinctive style of practice as an important component of the work.
Module Assessment
Assessment of this module comprises a poster presentation (50%) and 2,000-word reflective assignment (50%), both reflecting on learning from students’ practice project.
Module 6: Advanced Professional Practice 4: Complexity and psycho-social interventions (APP4)
- Year of Study: Year 2
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 15 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leader: Dr Anna Harvey
Module Aims
- Engage students in the study of a range of contemporary theory and research that addresses complexity in everyday practice and organisational settings.
- Develop confidence in mastering difficult conceptual frameworks in the field of applied complexity theory.
- Relate students’ direct experience of working in complex environments with complex cases and the range of reading and theory in the programme.
- Encourage a high level of intellectual independence in studying, analysing, critiquing and applying theoretical and research studies to professional experience.
- Support students in writing a concise, original and experientially grounded assignment that engages with ideas at the leading edge of modern applied social science.
- Enable students to relate the work of the module to their own emerging focus of research for the doctoral thesis.
- Through presentations in reading seminars, enable students to demonstrate the capacity for clear, articulate and critical communication of difficult ideas.
- Develop a complexity informed view of oppressive structures and systems and of ecological contexts.
Module Assessment
Students are required to submit a 3,000-word theoretical case study of a complex case or organisational process from the student’s own experience, showing evidence of a command of the key concepts learned in the module, and ability to deploy these in a discriminating and intelligent manner.
Module 7: Research Thesis (RM3)
- Year of Study: Years 3+
- FHEQ Level: Level 8
- Credit Weighting: 240 credits
- Module Status: Core
- Module Leaders: Dr Philip Archard, Dr Amina Adan, Dr Louise Grant & Dr Anna Harvey
Module Aims
- To apply research skills in a real-world environment in order to complete a research project which is of some value to students’ field of professional practice.
- To implement original, relevant and purposeful research, with a sound basis achieved through integrating a review of existing literature, ontological and epistemological considerations, strategy, design and methodology appropriate to the research question.
- To articulate and defend the positions that the student has adopted with regard to their research and successfully negotiate a viva examination based on determining the originality, reliability and validity of the research and the value to the profession.
Module Assessment
Assessment is through the submission and a viva examination of a thesis up to 40,000 words detailing your original research.
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.
Course details
In order to undertake this course, we ask that you have a master’s 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.
Please note: you may see the D55 course also referred to as SCDOTP003 in communications from our application system.
Home
£5,170 per year (2025/26)
International
£10,340 per year (2025/26)
You will be charged course fees for each year of your course. If your course is longer than one year, the fees that you will be charged after the first year will be subject to an annual uplift, which is not normally expected to exceed 6% or the Consumer Price Index (as stated on 01 September of that academic year) if higher than 6%. At its discretion and in rare instances, the Trust may determine a figure greater than either, to reflect costs associated with the activity (e.g. assessment, teaching, administration etc.), which shall not exceed 10%. Please refer to our Terms and Conditions, and Student Fees & Refund Policy for further information.
Financial support may be available to help you fund your studies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, including a postgraduate loan – find more information here.
Assessment
Assessment in the first two years is by written coursework. Research methods units are assessed by 5,000-word submissions, a critical literature review in year one and a research proposal in year two.
Other units are assessed by 3,000-word essays or case studies. The research phase of the programme is assessed by a 40,000-word thesis and successful completion of all these requirements leads to the award of a doctorate.
Attendance
The core attendance day is Thursday. The programme requires attendance on 14 full or half days in each of the first two years on a fortnightly basis, plus the five-day group relations conference in year one which normally runs in the week preceding Christmas week.
In the research phase, there are monthly research continuation seminars, normally on a Thursday, and individual research supervision meetings which can be organised on a more flexible basis.
There is provision for some one-to-one elements of the programme to be accessed remotely, but this needs to be negotiated. This relates to one-to-one aspects of the course only.
Graduates from this course have continued to develop their careers as practice leaders either in strategic leadership or practice leadership positions, in advanced or specialised practice roles and in education, or academia.
Application deadlines
There are a number of important application deadlines associated with our postgraduate courses, however we encourage you to apply as early as possible, as spaces on our courses are limited and can be competitive.
Applications for this course are expected to close on Thursday 31 July 2025.
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, bringing 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 as well as current practitioners, 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.
Testimonials
Course facilitators
Accreditations
This course is validated by the University of Essex.
Apply now
Start your application for this course.
Apply now
Start your application for this course.
Recommended courses
Explore courses to study beforehand
-
Master’s
Eligible for Student VisaSocial work (M23)