European Master in Social Work with Families and Children

LINK AL SITO

This Erasmus Mundus MFAMILY is a two year master programme of 120 ECTS. Students will spend a semester each in Lisbon, Stavanger and Gothenburg before moving to the desired partner institution to work on their master’s thesis. The language of instruction for the programme is English. Upon completion of the programme, students will be awarded a joint degree by the consortium.

The programme is jointly developed by ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), University of Gothenburg (UGOT), University of Stavanger (UiS) and Makerere University (MU). MFAMILY is also proud of the active participation of 26 associate partners, 8 of which are higher education institutions from several continents. This gives the programme a truly global character, and a great potential to respond to needs in skills development, teaching, research and employability in the area of social work with children and families.

This master addresses the improvement of knowledge and skills for people working with interventions for vulnerable children and marginalized families. MFAMILY will develop an education that will provide unique knowledge and innovative competences for international comparative child and family social work. Students will be updated on the latest research and practices on social work interventions for vulnerable children and families.  This master programme aims to enhancepostgraduate students’ employability through the improvement of skills and knowledge in order to match the needs of EU actions to protect children from violence and other vulnerabilities as well as to work with the pressure on modern families. The students will hold unique competences that are demanded from local and national governmental institutions as well as from NGOs and private actors in the field of social work and social welfare. The qualified students from MFAMILY will represent a group with expert knowledge in a field with great demand for new solutions, especially in times of economic downturn.

All the universities involved in this consortium will contribute with excellent standards of teaching and research expertise on themes focused on family issues and the rights of the children, on migration and globalization processes dealing with children and families, as well as on social work and social research methods, to get a comprehensive and comparative view. The programme also covers cross-country/continental comparisons in relation to welfare models and situations for marginalized families and children at risk. Underlying this programme is an understanding that social work with families and children gains from an integrative, critical approach where multidisciplinary perspectives and cross country/continental traditions are taken into account. The learning experience is based on interplay between theory and practice, which will be reflected in the final master dissertation and in the future professional capabilities acquired by the students.