When I first walked into a college classroom nearly a decade ago, I wasn’t a lecturer but a woman in recovery, trying to rebuild a life that addiction had torn apart.
I had just had my first son, some 20 years after leaving school with no FE qualifications. My Access to HE course, which I completed with a distinction, became a ladder out of an earlier chaos. It gave me a language for understanding people, systems and, eventually, myself.
Today as a lecturer and programme co-ordinator, I’m helping to shape a new foundation degree in social and community practice.
It feels like the natural continuation of my own journey: learning, recovery and community all stitched together.
The degree is being developed from need. In South Devon like in many coastal regions, social issues overlap – mental health, homelessness, addiction and low-level crime.
Here, like most areas, support services are stretched and staff turnover is high. Too many people fall through the cracks. The new programme is designed to develop practitioners who can stop that happening.
It equips them with the knowledge and critical skills needed to intervene early, carry out informed and ethical assessments, and work collaboratively across agencies. The aim is to ensure children, families and vulnerable adults receive timely, coordinated support.
The first year gives students the fundamentals – ethics, legislation, human development, wellbeing and research. The second year focuses on specific social challenges such as addiction and recovery, homelessness and deprivation, disability, mental health and working with victims and offenders.
That last group of modules excites me the most. Real lives don’t fit neatly into categories.
Someone can be a survivor, a parent, a carer, an offender and a neighbour all at once. Our students learn to see the whole person rather than just the label.
Our social science classroom discussions, sometimes fuelled by lived experience, remind me daily that empathy is a form of intelligence. Some have faced the issues they now study.
National data underlines why programmes like this matter. The Office for National Statistics reported this year that rates of symptoms of depression in England remain nearly double pre-pandemic levels.
Alcohol-related deaths in the south west are among the highest in the country.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation described 2025 as a “turning point for poverty policy” as people struggle with housing and cost-of-living pressures.
Every one of those statistics translates into the kind of cases our graduates will face.
A collaborative project with Devon and Cornwall Police asked our students to present ideas on tackling antisocial behaviour and crime in Torquay. Their message was direct: punishment without understanding changes nothing. They proposed prevention through support and education – ideas that are now being implemented.
Seeing that level of maturity in their analysis and proposals was a highlight of my career.
What strikes me most about working with my students is their sense of service. Whether they go on to become social workers, advocates, counsellors or police officers, they share one common purpose – to make people’s lives better.
Yes, it’s cheesy, but it’s also evidence-based. Research from the University of York shows that trauma-informed practice reduces repeat crisis interventions and improves community outcomes.
The data confirms what lived experience has already taught many of us. For me, recovery and teaching are different sides of the same coin.
Writing a module on addiction and recovery allowed me to bring that perspective into academia in a way that feels responsible and useful. It tells students – and maybe the sector – that vulnerability can coexist with professionalism.
Real change in social care begins when education helps people turn understanding into action that strengthens the communities around them.
When I look around my classroom, I see a few learners who might reshape the very services that once supported them. That’s the quiet power of further and higher education working together.
And if my story proves anything, it’s that learning doesn’t just change lives. It can save them too.
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