Working for Scotland - MA in Social Services & Healthcare
As part of Scottish Apprenticeship Week 2026 we sat down with Ceri and Cerys from Andersons Care Home to learn about their experience on our MA in Social Services & Healthcare.
The healthcare industry is one of Scotland's most valuable job sectors involving a range of duties from elderly care, home nursing, palliative care, healthcare assisting, and more. Combining work and study our MA in Social Services & Healthcare (SCQF Levels 6 and 7) the programme provides a meaningful way to develop highly skilled staff who can meet the needs of their organisation. This includes long‑established providers such as Andersons, one of Scotland’s oldest care homes.
We caught up with two of their apprentices Cerys and Ceri, to discover how the MA is supporting their journey within Scotland’s health and social care workforce.
How would you describe your MA experience?
Cerys - I really enjoyed being able to work and do my MA as all my work was relevant to my qualification and meant I could write about things easily.
I took my experiences as they came up and wrote about those and even if they weren’t needed for the current assessment, I was able to use them for other ones and this meant I was always working towards my qualification which I really liked.
The MA really made me think about the policies and procedures and I found I actually went looking for things to help me understand more. I felt it was really relevant to what I was doing.
I feel that my MA made me structure my time and look at the detail of things and meant that I was able to get through things a bit quicker. You are given 18 months to do it but I managed to do it in about 10 which I am really proud of.
Ceri – I needed to get this qualification for my job and consider myself experienced but feel it was really food to go over the codes of practice etc and see that what I was doing was right and it really made me think. It was good to use my brain and test myself. Another positive is this really improved my IT skills.
Another thing that helped was because a few of us were going through it together, we could support each other as well as our accessors support which really helped. She was always at the end of the phone or email.
Cerys, what for you, has been the benefits of the MA?
Doing this MA meant that I was funded and this saved me money which was a bonus as I needed to do it for my work.
I love my job, I started during COVID as a tester assistant and things went from there. My ultimate goal is be a nurse and this allowed me to do that. Another big plus is that I have been able to stay locally and keep doing my job and getting paid.
Ceri, you mentioned improving your IT skills where you offered any additional support?
What I did was some additional IT training that was available to me, and this helped before I started.
I was also having difficulties using Proof Positive. I mentioned this to my training coordinator who fed this back to the team, and this had meant that more training is given at induction.
Cerys, now that you have completed the SVQ level 3, what’s next?
I have worked for nearly 5 years with Andersons, and I love that I was able to do this. I am now studying my HNC in Healthcare Practice, this is a degree link course which means if I am successful, I will get a conditional offer to join the 2nd year of the nursing degree at UHI Inverness.
Modern Apprenticeships are part of the growing apprenticeship family funded through Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to discover more about the Apprenticeships we offer visit > For Business - Modern Apprenticeships
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