Lifelong Vocational Guidance - Cedefop · ety’ (1995), major principles for action have been stated. In 1997, in its Communication, ‘Towards a Europe of knowledge’, the Commission

2

Lifelong Vocational Guidance:European Case Studies

Authors:Sylvie Chiousse, Patrick Werquin

May 1998

Thessaloniki 1999

Published by:

CEDEFOP – European Centre for the Development of Vocational TrainingMarinou Antipa 12, GR-57001 Thessaloniki

Postal address:PO Box 27 – Finikas, GR-55102 Thessaloniki

Tel.: (30-31) 490 111Fax: (30-31) 490 102E-mail: [email protected]: www.cedefop.grInteractive website: www.trainingvillage.gr

EUROPEAN FOUNDATION for the Improvementof Living and Working ConditionsWyattville Road, Loughlinstown, Co. Dublin, Ireland

Tel.: (353-1) 204 31 00Fax: (353-1) 282 64 56E-mail: [email protected]: www.eurofound.ie

The Centre was established by Regulation (EEC) No 337/75 of the Councilof the European Communities, last amended by Council Regulation (EC)No 251/95 of 6 February 1995 and Council Regulation (EC) No 354/95 of20 February 1995.

3

A great deal of additional information on the European Union is available on the Internet.It can be accessed through the Europa server (http://europa.eu.int).

Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.

Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1999

ISBN 92-828-4121-9

© European Communities, 1999

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.

Technical production/DTP: Typo Studio, Thessaloniki

Printed in Greece

4

The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Thessaloniki)and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Condi-tions (Dublin) have over a number of years undertaken various projects on the sub-ject of the vocational integration of young people and the vocational reintegration ofadults.

It is the aim of this publication to summarise the main outcome of these efforts andto provide policy-makers and practitioners in the field with guidelines for the provi-sion of guidance and advice throughout the working lives of individuals, the purposebeing to support them in all the transitions they will have to face.

The social and vocational integration of young people and the social and vocationalreintegration of adults are key issues at a time when youth unemployment is particu-larly high and when it is very hard to break the spiral of long-term unemployment.Withthe difficulties being encountered by many people in the European Union as a resultof the economic crisis, the provision of help, guidance and advice on vocationalmatters has become the focus of today’s policies.

The European Union has shown its determination to find a solution to these prob-lems through the policies it has defined and the Community programmes it hasestablished in recent years.

In the social chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Commission’s WhitePaper on ‘Growth, Competitiveness, Employment’ (1993), the Essen summits (1994)and the European Commission White Paper ‘Teaching and learning: towards soci-ety’ (1995), major principles for action have been stated.

In 1997, in its Communication, ‘Towards a Europe of knowledge’, the Commissioncited the promotion of employment and, more specifically, the need for a new ap-proach to vocational integration as among its principal concerns.

The Member States, meeting in the Council on Employment in Luxembourg (1997),opted for resolutions on employment outlining the range of actions to be undertakenin the Member States. Regarding vocational integration and reintegration, it de-clared that

‘…...Member States will ensure that:every unemployed young person is offered a new start before reaching six monthsof unemployment, in the form of training, retraining, work practice, a job or otheremployability measure;unemployed adults are also offered a fresh start before reaching twelve monthsof unemployment by one of the aforementioned means or, more generally, byaccompanying individual vocational guidance.’

The vocational integration of young people as well as all the problems associatedwith the transition from school to training and employment, will probably be the

Sylvie Chiousse and Patrick Werquin

Sylvie Chiousse is a doctor of sociology.

Patrick Werquin is a doctor of economics and his work focuses on measures toassist the vocational integration of young people.

Preface

5

focus of the European programme(s) that will succeed the Leonardo da Vinci andSocrates programmes.

In practice, for CEDEFOP (the European Centre for the Development of VocationalTraining) and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and WorkingConditions, those concerns regarding the vocational integration and reintegration ofyoung people and adults have been translated into various projects and efforts.

Since 1991, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and WorkingConditions has been working on the Eurocounsel programme on the role of guid-ance and advice for adults. CEDEFOP, for its part, has gone on to develop twomajor themes, ‘The vocational guidance needs of various target groups aged under28’ and ‘the social and vocational integration of young people at local level’.

In both institutions, the projects implemented have been the outcome of researchand efforts set up and piloted in the Member States. For each project there havebeen national reports and a synthesis report. This body of reports has been takenas the basis for this publication.

Even though the former institution is more concerned with adults and the latter withyoung people, the results have in fact been highly complementary, combining tocreate a coherent approach to vocational integration and reintegration through thepractical provision of lifelong advice and guidance.

There is now no doubt that appropriate advice and a process of lifelong learning arevital factors in periods of transition for individuals, in that they help to limit futurerisks of unemployment. They need to be developed not just as a response to prob-lems but as preventive action.

Advisory, support and guidance services are therefore needed to help individualsthrough periods of transition. Because of the wide variety of the population groupsaffected and the problems they face, there is no one catch-all solution; rather thereis a set of particular services designed to improve or change what is seen as anunsatisfactory or a risk situation. Due to the long life of vocational advice and guid-ance initiatives, the large number of operators involved and the growing needs ofindividuals, a wide diversity of problems has been diagnosed, which do not fit in verywell with central or global forms of intervention. A consistent approach involving thesocial partners and a range of local organisations has been found to produce betterresults. At European and national levels, however, it is preferable to lay down gen-eral guidelines, to be adapted by each party to the specific context in which it oper-ates, so that the aid and support provided can be decentralised, local and geared tothe individual. This is the task set in this publication, which has been coordinated onbehalf of CEDEFOP by Pascaline Descy.

13 May 1998Clive PurkissDirector, European Foundation for theImprovement of Living and Working Conditions

Johan van RensDirector, European Centre for the

Development of Vocational Training

Preface

6

This publication is a synthesis of the findings of the Eurocounsel project conductedsince 1991 by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and WorkingConditions on the role of guidance and advice for adults, as well as CEDEFOPprojects. For instance, CEDEFOP has produced studies on ‘determining the needfor vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under 28years of age in the European Community – Young Europeans and vocational coun-selling: what do which young people need and want?’ (Chisholm, 1994). TheEurocounsel report (1994) covers ‘the role of guidance and advice for adults on anevolving labour market’. Lastly, a more recent study deals with ‘social and occupa-tional integration at local level’ (Stathopoulos, 1997) (see Bibliography at the end ofthis report).

Three difficulties have arisen in this synthesis report, of which the reader should beaware before embarking on the text.

First of all, the reports are not necessarily uniform in the subjects they cover. Boththe target groups and the problems they discuss differ, sometimes widely. In all thescientific literature and in every public action programme, a clear distinction hastraditionally been made between young people and adults.

Furthermore, these reports are already to some extent synthesis reports. This makesit a delicate exercise, given the risk of losing certain features of the original nationalreports which in a sense have been ‘synthesised’ twice. The essential aim of thestudies, moreover, is to propose recommendations on how to improve the servicesin question. This means that they tend to concentrate on those services that arelacking or are of poor quality; the achievements are often implied rather than high-lighted. In some cases, then, it seemed the natural approach to go back to theoriginal reports to illustrate a topic.

Lastly, the European dimension is a factor only where the solution proposed istransnational mobility. All the operators involved in the other actions described areat local level – the city or region – or even at neighbourhood level.

Nonetheless, this body of reports has a number of strengths in that it gives anoverall picture of the effects of the economic crisis on the advice and guidanceservices provided or envisaged in response to the expectations of existing or futureusers. This is one of the essential advantages of using the national reports as start-ing points. They are invaluable sources of information on how the services operateon a very small scale, without taking a comparative or international dimension as abasis. This synthesis report draws, then, on experience on the ground in manylocations, directed at many different groups of people and with different objectives.The data on which the report is based are not necessarily harmonised or uniform,but they help to clarify and flesh out the more theoretical constructions commonlyproduced on advice and guidance.

Preamble

7

98Detailed Contents

Prefac e ........................................................................................................................................................... 5

Preambl e ...................................................................................................................................................... 6

Introductio n ............................................................................................................................................... 11

1. Defining target groups and helping very disparate peopl e ................................. 17

1.1. Methodological problems in identifying target group s ......................... 17

1.2. Marginalised individuals in need of vocationalor social (re)integratio n ......................................................................................... 18

1.3. Individuals in the process of becoming marginalise d ........................... 20

1.4. Individuals who are ‘apparently problem-free ’ .......................................... 22

1.5. Three groups of people who have been adverselyaffected by the economic recessio n ............................................................... 24

2. Facilitating transition (social, personal and/or occupational ) ............................ 25Every area of life can be approached through counselling. Put simply, everyindividual has to face a series of many transitions of various types. There is noone ready-made solution to make the path smoother. The needs and demandsmust be clearly identified and analysed in each individual case.

2.1. The specific question of vocational integratio n ....................................... 26The inadequacy of the jobs on offer remains the essential cause ofunemployment. When vacancies do occur, to be successful in ob-taining the job one first needs to gain confidence in oneself. This alsorequires an acknowledgement of the world around one and a knowl-edge of the world of work. In other words, what is needed is to helpyoung people to take their place in society.

2.1.1. The personal dimension: encouraging self-esteemand determinatio n .................................................................................................... 26As a recommendation, there is a prerequisite here which is beyondthe control of advisory measures: people have to make themselvesknown if they are to be counselled. But the key word is still motivationor, more commonly, remotivation.

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2.1.2. Networking ....................................................................................................................... 28However effective the effort to intermediate on the labour market or inmatters of advice and guidance, people must be helped to discern andactivate their own networks. The way personal networks are mobilisedvery often determines whether a person is integrated into the workingworld, and always determines integration in society.

2.1.3. Making the best use of what one has learned ................................................ 29Helping young people to persuade potential employers is a vital factor.Few people are recruited to the kind of job that corresponds to thespecial field for which they have been trained. Jobs are so scarce thataccepting a post that does not make use of one’s skills is an option thatshould not necessarily be dismissed. On the other hand, young peoplemust be persuaded to waste no time in making their competencesknown. Above all, those who have had technical or vocational trainingmust also know how to make good use of what they have learned.

2.2. The question of reintegratio n ................................................................................. 32When it comes to occupational reintegration, it is no longer just youngpeople who are involved. The wide variety of groups affected means thatmeasures must be differentiated according to far more criteria. Para-doxically, there should no longer be any doubt about the value of preced-ing actual recruitment by job-related activities – voluntary or socially use-ful work – which help to establish a working rhythm and a proper attitudeto work.

2.2.1. Reacquiring a social role .......................................................................................... 32Here the main recommendation is to help people regain a feeling ofbeing useful. Working in the voluntary sector in line with this thinking.

2.2.2. Temporary reintegration ........................................................................................... 34Public policy measures on employment also have a place in this con-text. They should be seen as a transition phase, for example in themove towards employment or towards retirement.

2.2.3. Reintegration in a different setting ...................................................................... 36Again with the idea of broadening the range of opportunities, the jobsmarket must not be the sole focus of interest; encouragement must begiven to seeking out new opportunities. Setting up one’s own businessis a possible route.

3. Institutional solutions: personalising help, advice and guidance _ lookingahead to the medium- or long-term futur e ....................................................................... 39The concept of prevention underlies every measure to help individuals not atimmediate risk of unemployment or exclusion. This is a fairly recent approachinternationally, coinciding with what the European Union sees as medium- orlong-term actions, such as lifelong training or advice and assistance even forpeople who are in employment. For instance, appreciating the value of continu-ing training is in itself a protection against future risks of unemployment or beingstuck in a dead-end job.

Among the recent issues, the private provision of advisory services highlightsthe funding of this form of intervention, and creates a risk that only people withsufficient financial resources have access to it.

9

98Detailed Contents

3.1. Improving services at individual leve l ........................................................... 40For a more detailed analysis of a person’s particular situation and tohelp plan the most suitable forms of help, counselling needs to beboth local and personalised.

3.1.1. Personalised help ..................................................................................................... 40Personalising aid helps the practitioner to analyse the situation of aperson coming to him in greater detail. This also builds up the per-son’s confidence in the soundness and effectiveness he can expectfrom the options suggested.

3.1.2. The activation factor ............................................................................................... 43The main role of services must be to provide a sort of mentoringactivity. The need is to help the individual develop and apply strate-gies to improve his situation.

3.1.3. The overall prospect: from one-off support to life plans ..................... 46The aid and support work of counselling services should not be con-fined to occasional periods of occupational transition. The situationshould be regarded in terms of one’s whole life, taking all the otheraspects of a person’s life at and outside work into account as well.

3.1.4. Towards prevention ................................................................................................. 48Counselling should be more widespread and an integral part of eve-ryday life. It should be provided before the event and also contributebefore unemployment or exclusion becomes established.

3.2. Reviewing the concept and organisation of services atEuropean, national and local leve l ................................................................... 51Although the target groups and the services offered vary greatly fromone country to another and even from one region or town to another,outline directives should be laid down, which can then be adapted ineach place to the particular context.

3.2.1. A specific policy at the European and national levels ........................... 52A declaration of principle setting out the priorities and the main coursesof action at European and national levels needs to be established,with minimum standards of guarantee in order to harmonise the prac-tice of counselling within the European Union.

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3.2.2. The multidisciplinary and holistic approach .................................................. 53Not only must advice be provided to individuals, but the range of serv-ices should also be extended and clients should be directed towardsother networks, where appropriate.

3.2.3. Linking passive and active measures ................................................................ 56Here the recommendations are very practical. On the one hand, peopleshould not have to forfeit their benefits when they move from a passiveto an active measure or when they set up their own businesses. Theremust, therefore, be close contact among the bodies responsible forthese two dimensions, social and economic.On the other hand, active measures should be directed more system-atically towards the institutions or authorities in charge of local eco-nomic development. Some solutions could, for instance, be based onthe promotion of SMEs, the creation of new jobs or services and thedevelopment of self-employment.

3.2.4. The question of the training of practitioners and the(re)definition of their dutie s ..................................................................................... 58Advisers themselves must have nationally certified training. This shouldbe followed up by continuing training so that they can specialise in theadvice they give. For example, sound expertise in the local economy isa prerequisite for giving advice on setting up a business.

Conclusio n .................................................................................................................................................... 61

Anne x ............................................................................................................................................................... 63Methods of evaluating counselling services .......................................................................... 63Remedying the shortcomings _ evaluation: quantitative and qualitative ..................... 64Problems of method ........................................................................................................................ 64Evaluation for a cost/benefit analysis ....................................................................................... 66Evaluation for services adapted to the needs ....................................................................... 67

Glossary of the main abbreviations use d ...................................................................................... 69

Bibliograph y ................................................................................................................................................. 70Synthesis reports ............................................................................................................................. 70National reports ................................................................................................................................ 70Local reports ...................................................................................................................................... 71Additional bibliography ................................................................................................................... 72

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Introduction

The substantial rise in unemployment in the coun-tries of the European Union – from 3.7% long-termunemployment in 1975 to 10.9% in 1996 1 – hasmeant that subsequent debate has focused on anumber of questions relating to the measures neededto help people through this period of crisis. Unem-ployment is omnipresent (see tables 1 to 3) in thedescription of the problems encountered by a groupof people for whom public intervention measures seekto take partial responsibility. In fact, this view of thingsis misleading in two ways.

First of all, the unemployed within the meaning ofinstitutional definitions – and there are a number ofdefinitions and categories in each case – are not theonly ones to merit sustained attention from the au-thorities or from the various institutions or associa-tions whose role it is to support and counsel peoplein difficulty. Those difficulties may be financial, thedirect result of having lost or not being able to find ajob and source of income, but the risks to the popu-lation of the European Union may come from otherdirections. Of course the problems include social orcultural integration, ill-health and any other form ofdisadvantage or disability. Nevertheless, unemploy-ment is the problem most feared and the one on whichmost attention is brought to bear – often in vain –and the 18 million unemployed in the European Un-ion are always the groups towards which public in-tervention is directed. This has varied in that the stresshas shifted alternately from the unemployed in gen-eral to women, young people, immigrants or the long-term or very long-term unemployed, but the lack of ajob remains the common factor.

This view of things, which leads to direct action infavour of individuals, is also misconceived, becauseit appears to support the theory that unemploymentis due to the shortage of jobs. The idea is that theonly question that makes sense is: what can be doneto help the jobless who want to work to gain accessto the jobs that are vacant? This places the empha-sis on extending initial education, developing certifi-cation and the acquisition of more or less horizontalcompetences, the provision of vocational training,attitudes and behaviour patterns, knowing what todo and how to behave, etc. Stating the problems inthis way is no doubt the pragmatic approach, since itis easier to tackle the characteristics of individuals –to train or advise them – than it is to alter the struc-tural parameters of the economy as a whole. Theadvent and continued existence of a high level ofunemployment are, above all, due to the reduced de-mand for labour as a result of too low an economicgrowth rate. In the absence of appropriate macro-economic remedies, explicit intervention is concen-

1 European Commission, 1997.

98Introduction

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1 Tabl

e 1

Certain indicators in European Union long-term unemployment – Total20-24 years old

studying ortraining 5

Rate ofemployment 1

unemploymentrate 2

unemploymentrate: young

people 3

unemploymentrate: long-

term 4

Europe of 15 67.7 10.9 21.8 48.2 37.0Belgium 62.8 9.8 22.9 61.2 41.4Denmark 81.1 6.9 10.6 26.6 48.5Germany * 68.9 8.9 9.6 47.8 37.0Greece 63.0 9.6 31.0 56.7 30.2Spain 60.6 22.1 41.9 52.9 44.6France 68.8 12.4 28.9 38.3 42.4Ireland 63.8 11.8 18.1 59.6 28.0Italy 58.4 12.0 33.5 65.6 35.3Luxembourg 74.5 3.3 9.1 - 34.2Netherlands 69.6 6.3 11.5 49.0 48.4Austria 72.9 4.4 6.0 25.7 32.3Portugal 71.2 7.3 16.7 53.0 40.5Finland 72.8 15.4 38.2 35.9 49.2Sweden 78.1 10.0 21.1 19.1 27.7Un. Kingdom 76.0 8.2 15.5 39.8 23.8

1: % of the population of working age2: no. of people of working age who are unemployed, as % of total active population (unemployed + employed)3: % of the active population aged 15 to 244: % of unemployed5: as a percentage

*: including new Länder Source: European Community, 1997

2Tabl

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Certain indicators in European Union long-term unemployment – Women20-24 years old


Rate ofemployment 1

unemploymentrate 2


people 3


term 4




13

trated on the labour supply (training, counselling, or-ganising the waiting list for jobs, etc.). This approachfocuses too heavily on the supply of labour and skills,but it does have the merit of placing people at risk ofexclusion at the heart of public or quasi-public inter-vention measures. It now seems to be generally ac-cepted that a waiting list for jobs is not just makingthe best of a bad situation, but a necessary preser-vation of individuals’ skills so that when the economyrevives they are not excluded from recruitment forthe newly created jobs.

Not all the groups are equal in terms of unemploy-ment, the difficulties of integration or the employmentcrisis in the broader sense (lack of advancement,earnings, and career prospects). Young people areamong the groups most affected2 and are more of-ten targeted by labour-market intervention measures.They are in fact a major challenge to a country, forthey will be the working population of the future. Re-search on the vocational integration of young peopleshows that initial education, any additional trainingand the early years of their working lives to a greatextent determine the prospects for lasting integra-tion and a successful career. Future exclusion fromworking life or even from social or cultural life cansometimes be discerned very early on in the routetaken by young people. It is important that they bequickly confronted with working attitudes and that theyput into practice the skills in which they have beentrained.

To sum up, although public intervention measurestarget individuals, this does not mean that peopleshould systematically be treated as solely responsi-ble for their own unemployment. But, looking further,although the causes of unemployment are no doubtstructural or macro-economic, this does not meaneither that nothing can be done at individual level.Helping and counselling people who are in difficul-ties or at risk of exclusion means preparing for eco-nomic revival. Just to sit back and wait would be tan-tamount to collective resignation to failure due to anadequate supply of skilled labour. If there is a revival,it will embody new forms and standards of produc-tion. The goods and services produced will change,the skills and qualifications required will be new. Theyare already emerging, but there is no doubt that manyof tomorrow’s trades do not yet exist.

Pending this possible economic revival, the MemberStates and Europe as a whole are setting up specificmeasures to combat unemployment, long-term un-employment and the risk of exclusion. What is atstake is the preservation of social cohesion at everylevel: local, national and European.2 Tables 1 to 3 show that unemployment rates are up to threetimes higher for young people than for the population as a whole.

Introduction

98Introduction

Introduction

14

The interest of international bodies has been ex-pressed on several occasions:l the European Commission White Papers: ‘Growth,

Competitiveness, Employment’ (1993) and ‘Teach-ing and learning: towards a learning society (1995);

l the Essen summits (1994);l the Maastricht Treaty social chapter.

More recently, the guidelines of the Council for Em-ployment in Luxembourg (1997) reached conclusionson the different actions to be undertaken in the Mem-ber States. One of these resolutions focuses on im-proving the vocational integration ability of both youngpeople and adults:

‘…...Member States will ensure that: every un em-ployed young person is offered a new start beforereaching six months of unemployment, in the formof training, retraining, work practice, a job or otheremployability measure; unemployed adults arealso offered a fresh start before reaching twelvemonths of unemployment by one of the aforemen-tioned means or, more generally, by accompany-ing individual vocational guidance.’ (see EuropeanUnion, European Commission, DGV, 1998).

The Luxembourg guidelines also mention the resolveto move from passive to active measures, and to fa-cilitate the transition from school to work.

In 1997, in its Communication ‘Towards a Europe of knowl-edge’, the Commission cites the promotion of employ-ment and more specifically the need for a new approachto vocational integration as among its main concerns.

Furthermore, the vocational integration of young peo-ple as well as all the problems associated with themove from school to training and employment willprobably be at the heart of the European programmessucceeding the Leonardo da Vinci and Socrates pro-grammes. These questions will be tackled in detailduring the forthcoming summit in Cardiff.

The European Union, then, is developing a series ofrecommendations, just as it is taking decisions onemployment. This may be compared to the work ofCEDEFOP, as outlined in this synthesis report, onenhancing employability – acquiring the characteris-tics compatible with recruitment once a job opportu-nity emerges – and enabling individuals to adapt toany jobs they may be offered. The experience and

3Tabl

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Certain indicators in European Union long-term unemployment – Men20-24 years old


Rate ofemployment 1

unemploymentrate 2


people 3


term 4




15

research on which this document draws go a littlefurther than employment, in that close attention hasbeen paid to all forms of activity and specific recom-mendations are made on them.

In the text that follows, the difficulty of the task isevident: it is not just offering aid (an active measure),but it must also avoid leaving individuals without re-sources on the fringes of society (a passive meas-ure); the need is not only to provide jobs but also togive abundant advice on longer-term integration andfuture careers.

Even though the purpose of the two documents dif-fers - the White Paper on ‘Growth, competitiveness,employment’ (1993) is a statement of proposals tobe considered, whereas the texts that follow are de-cisions adopted by the European Union - they bothdefine the fields of intervention for the national andinternational authorities. Nevertheless, these recom-mendations and decisions are very much directedtowards employment policy. For example, Chapter 7of the White Paper covers education and training,Chapter 8 the link between job creation and economicgrowth and Chapter 9 the cost of labour.

At the same time, many reports, seminars, pro-grammes and recommendations have attempted toformulate the policies best suited to tackling the vari-ous problems outlined here: the Eurocounsel re-search-action programme conducted by the Euro-pean Foundation for the Improvement of Living andWorking Conditions (1991), as well as reports issuedby the Organisation for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment (OECD), the International Labour Of-fice (ILO) and the European Centre for the Develop-ment of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) - the list isnot exhaustive. At any event, there is a notablestrengthening of the potential role of counselling andguidance services in the active measures for em-ployment and the vocational routes and life plans ofindividuals.

In defining the role and purpose of these sup-port and advisory services, we find several differ-ent terms used to describe the same things. Someof the structures are regarded as ‘support’ services,others as ‘advisory’ or ‘support and advice’ or ‘voca-tional counselling and guidance’ services. Their es-sential contribution, whatever the name by which theyare called, is towards the prevention and reductionof unemployment and social exclusion by helping in-dividuals3 to find the path best suited to them per-sonally in their own particular position. Whereas itused to be the traditional role of the vocational ad-viser to provide vocational information and guidance,3 The word client is frequently used to designate a person using support, coun-selling and vocational guidance services. This concept has not been gener-ally used here. It is more appropriate for a commercial service provider, anddoes not give an accurate picture of most of the services described here.

98Introduction

Introduction

16

especially for those about to leave school or who havejust left, rising unemployment and stubborn long-termunemployment have led to the development of unitsfocusing equally on the adult unemployed or even onthose still in employment. There are agencies cater-ing more specifically for young people (for instance,schools), and others for adults who have already hadjobs (national employment agencies, for example),but many of the support, counselling and guidanceunits operating today are able to propose specialmeasures to both young people and adults.

We can already discern the existence of differentpractices and objectives previously camouflagedunder different names (integration/social reintegra-tion vocational reintegration). It is a subject to whichwe shall return in Chapter 2.

‘Counselling’ is defined as bringing together all thoseforms of the structured provision of advice, supportand information through which an individual arrivesat an informed and self-determined understandingof how he should deal with his working status (Euro-pean Foundation for the Improvement of Living andWorking Conditions – Watt, 1997, p.133).

The stated end objective of these counselling serv-ices is to help the individual to bring order into hisworking life (European Foundation – Watt, 1997, p.56), take decisions and find the most appropriate pathin his own situation. The types of counselling rangefrom services specifically linked to the reintegrationof the unemployed on the labour market to those thatdevelop the competences of their ‘clients’ by direct-ing them towards the most appropriate training courseor studies for their needs or those that will help themface up to their social status (European Foundation– Watt, 1997, p. 36). Here the main role is to preparethe largest number of individuals to take up work (paidor unpaid) that already exists or that has been cre-ated in order to match the supply of labour moreclosely to the demand4.

Vocational guidance and the services that provide itare expected to perform a positive role in promotingthe social and economic integration of individuals andhelping them to map out a satisfactory route in per-sonal terms and a productive route on the social level.Besides providing vocational guidance, they shouldraise the level of qualifications of individuals and helpthem to draw up long-term projects (life plans), withthe ultimate aim of improving the quality of their lives.

The transformations brought about by economic andsocial change will lead to the development of suchservices. They will alter values, practices and men-

talities (perception and understanding of phenom-ena), which in turn will affect the needs of individualsand the services to be provided by the agencies con-cerned.

Vocational counselling and guidance services willhave to adapt to these changes on the labour marketand in individuals. If society changes, clearly the guid-ance to be given will also change, and theory, prac-tice and the goals will have to be reconsidered. Thesubject is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3 ofthis document, especially as, in the current contextof economic crisis and the shortage of jobs, the roleof counselling and guidance units can no longer beconfined to occupational integration or reintegration,in short to that of a ‘employment facilitator’. This isall the more obvious when such services, even if inclose contact with the local (or wider) labour market,and even if they manage to set up a network of em-ployer partners, have no miracle cure: jobs will notbecome available if none exist.

By the nature of things, the definitions and objec-tives to be allocated to support, counselling and guid-ance services are changing. Today it is no longer re-ally a question of trying to eradicate unemploymentand the risk of exclusion it entails. These structuresmay, however, make unemployment less endemicby applying appropriate ‘treatments’. In the absenceof a panacea, alternatives and palliative remediesmay be ‘prescribed’ – to continue the medical anal-ogy – or at least proposed and strongly recom-mended. They must often be improved so that theybest serve the interests of each individual (Chapter3), while efforts are made to determine the currentgaps and weaknesses which appropriate coordina-tion would no doubt help to remedy. The alternativesto unemployment, the palliatives for difficult situationsor the treatments to be proposed by the counsellingand guidance services will differ depending on thetarget groups and their needs – first aid, or longer-term help.

In the initial stages, then, there should be as precisea definition as possible of those who now need orwill need this particular support in the course of theirlives, so as to determine as best one can theresponse(s) required (Chapter 1). In the second chap-ter, the initiatives themselves are described. Particu-lar findings on current practices and suggestions forsolutions set out in the documents used are presentedin the third and final chapter. Finally, it should bepointed out that the evaluation of these counsellingservices should not be overlooked but should alsobe the subject of special recommendations. Thisquestion is discussed in the annex.

4 Again, in stating the problem in this way it must not be assumed that unem-ployment is a problem linked solely to an alledgedly inadequate or deficientlabour supply.

17

11.11.2

Defining target groups andhelping very disparate people

1. Defining target groups and helping verydisparate people

Before any attempt is made to provide guidance oradvice or to help someone to integrate, there mustbe a diagnosis. There can be no hope of a piece ofadvice being effective or to the point unless the rootproblem has first been defined. Such a diagnosismust be based on an evaluation of the needs andexpectations of particular groups, seen against theirgeographic, economic and socio-cultural background.

Since population groups are not homogeneous, it isrelatively difficult to identify and construct targetgroups. A whole series of variables needs to be takeninto consideration before arriving at a sound diagno-sis, and – depending on the context – these may bemore or less significant or numerous. The level oftraining, the amount of work experience, the geo-graphical context (an area in economic decline or,on the contrary, a growth area) and an individual’ssocial and cultural environment are still the determin-ing factors that should first be taken into account sothat the most appropriate help can be offered andthe best solution for someone’s particular situationcan be suggested.

1.1. Methodological problems in identifyingtarget groups

If we were to represent the process of categorisingthe population visually – as an aid to understanding– the identification of target groups could be seen asoperating on the Russian doll principle. Briefly, therecould be three big dolls, three big sets of individu-als5 , defined according to their current situation andtheir present and future needs: short-, medium- orlong-term.

These three main groups call for three main types ofresponse – ranging from highly urgent to very detailed.

Within these groups there are sub-groups (based on,for example, age, sex, ethnic or social origins, levelof education, etc.), and then sub-sub-groups, in whichother variables will be considered as pertinent andso having an effect and to be taken into account (so-cial and cultural environment, economic activity in thearea in which they live, etc.). For each of these, obvi-ously, the response will be different because of theparticular issues raised.

In the same way, the measures to be taken and thepolicies to be applied will have to be set up on sev-eral levels and trigger off various degrees of inter-vention: European, national, regional and local.

5 The word play in the almost indiscriminate use of the words ‘groups’ or‘individuals’ is intentional.


18

The response cannot be the same for two differentindividuals simply because their levels of qualifica-tion are the same and because both are unem-ployed6 : ‘turnkey’ solutions do not exist. It is clearthat consideration must also be given to people’saspirations and their motivation for wanting to entera given branch of the working world, as well as theparticular problems they might meet in adapting byreason of their origins (ethnic or social), the environ-ment in which they develop, the area in which theylive and the job opportunities available once they aretrained, for example.

For instance, while it is important to devise a fairlybroad initial typology, it is also vital to bear in mindthat it will always be necessary to proceed from thegeneral to the particular and then from the particularto the general in the main target groups to be identi-fied and the solutions to be provided, so that the ques-tions arising and the problems to be solved in eachindividual case can be clearly discerned.

Within these main groups, people still vary consider-ably but, as a general rule, the problems they faceare fairly comparable.

The relevance of the three main groups described inthis chapter is that they allow for both the social andoccupational status of the individual and the (overall)type of response needed to point the way to a betterquality of life. In the next paragraph, the subjects dis-cussed are: marginalised people who need to inte-grate, individuals who are at risk of marginalisationand the ‘apparently problem-free’.

1.2. Marginalised individuals in need ofvocational or social (re)integration

The group made up of marginalised individuals is theone that the vocational support, counselling and guid-ance units should treat as the highest priority. It in-cludes all those who have severed their links withsociety and the working world and who are in a verydire situation.

As we hinted when we approached the question ofrelevance in the construction of target groups, thisgroup is far from homogeneous. It contains young-sters who have left school without a diploma or skilland have never had access to a job or who havevery little work experience, the long-term unemployed,for example the disabled or those who have aban-doned everything – perhaps because they had notmuch to lose anyway – and who have lost all contactwith their personal and family networks.

Such marginalisation implies non-participation in so-cially recognised and valued activities and roles, in-cluding of course non-participation in gainful employ-ment, which is still, according to several reports, animportant channel for the building of identity(Chisholm, 1994, p. 48).

For these drifters, whose downward path may leadto begging, prostitution and crime, exclusion from thelabour market is not the most urgent problem. Thepriority is said to be ‘immediate survival’, and thenfinding somewhere to live, recovering their self-con-fidence and making connections in their social worldonce again. The problem is all the more critical forthem in that, having given up all hopes of betterment,they do not turn to the services that could help themand form in some way an ‘invisible group’: suchgroups are known to exist and there is reason to be-lieve that their needs could be met within those struc-tures, but the means of reaching and supporting thepeople concerned are scarce, perhaps non-existent.

The UK, Netherlands and Danish reports publishedby CEDEFOP (Howieson et al., 1994; Wijnaendts vanResandt, 1994; Maaløe, 1994) give a clear pictureand provide examples of these individuals – youngpeople in these instances – who are unskilled, some-times with no work experience and no fixed abode.

Besides these groups, who are almost beyond reachand who seldom ask for the aid they need, exclusionmay also be due to failure on the part of the support,counselling and guidance services – or specific serv-ices – to take responsibility for the situation of cer-tain population groups. The countries taking part inthe Eurocounsel research project of the EuropeanFoundation for the Improvement of Living and Work-ing Conditions have highlighted – and deplore – cer-tain cases of exclusion that have not come about asa result of the individual’s deliberate intent.

Box 1 gives an example of this type of discriminationor delayed aid whose impact may prejudice the pos-sibility of someone being integrated or reintegrated.

Box 1

The voucher programme for unemployed adults

The guidance voucher programme is a pilot pro-gramme launched in late 1992 by the Guidance Net-work, Bradford Training and Enterprise Council.

Under the scheme, unemployed adults can ‘buy’ em-ployment and training guidance and advice, payingwith a voucher.

6 It should be pointed out that were these criteria to be multiplied to infinitythe result would be to individualise treatment completely.

19

“Only unemployed adults strictly fulfilling the condi-tions laid down are entitled to use the guidancevoucher programme. Those conditions relate to age,the length of time a person has been unemployedand the type of social support received. People aredirected to the guidance voucher programme solelyby the job centre, provided that they satisfy the con-ditions and the centre feels that they need it.

To be entitled to a voucher, a person must have beenregistered as unemployed for the six months preced-ing the application, be in direct receipt of social al-lowances and be eighteen or over. In addition, at aninterview at the job centre the person must show thathe or she needs guidance and advice.

Once a person has proved that the conditions aremet and a need for advice has been established, thejob centre staff give the person a voucher for andinformation on the six accredited agencies and thetype of services they offer”.

Later on we are told that no one agency is able tooffer advice and guidance on the whole range of train-ing and learning opportunities available in the region.

Source: Hurley, 1994 (p. 134-136).

In some countries, immigrants and refugees find thatthey are automatically excluded and marginalisedbecause the law does not permit them to work andtake advantage of the social services. In Denmark, itis almost impossible for anyone to gain access togeneral employment services unless he is alreadycovered by an occupational insurance scheme. Inother countries, it is not easy for an unemployed per-son to benefit from counselling services unless hehas been out of work for at least a year. If a personfaces other difficulties in his personal life, if his quali-fications are at too low a level, if he is of foreign ori-gin, etc., it might reasonably be supposed that withina year he will be homeless and marginalised and befar harder to ‘recuperate’, to use the term adopted bycounselling practitioners. Here, the fear of waste (offunding and services) leads to other forms of waste(individual and collective).

Long-term unemployment is also widely perceivedas having a crucial role in the process leading to thedevelopment of an underclass or to social exclusion.The individual gradually loses his network of workingand personal relations and has less chance of easilyfinding another job, or at least a role in society, with-out specific help. Since they are not kept up to dateor refined, his competences and knowledge ‘age’ andit becomes harder to use his skills as currency on a

11.21.3



20

labour market where priority is increasingly given tomore highly qualified people.

Since not all members of this marginalised groupapply for support, it is no doubt one of the most diffi-cult to define and identify and it is therefore hard tomeet its needs. It is also a group for which preven-tion is no longer an option; what its members need isaction, as quickly as possible; there must be a genu-ine effort to provide support and advice, even to takeover responsibility for them, and above all to restoretheir confidence in themselves.

1.3. Individuals in the process of becomingmarginalised

This group is just as varied as the previous group butits situation is less critical, although there is a risk ofit becoming so in the absence of suitable measures(see Chapters 2 and 3). Individuals in the process ofmarginalisation can be considered to be unemployedyoung people, people in areas in decline and thosewho ‘do not always appear in the visual range of guid-ance counsellors’ (young homebound women, forexample: Chisholm, 1994).

The most commonly reported case of this group isthat of people with low levels of skills. Often the train-ing opportunities to which they can aspire are verylimited – in some areas non-existent – to allow themto improve their precarious status.

This is particularly the case in Greece, where thenational report (Zanni-Teliopoulou, Stathakopoulou,1995) clearly shows that young people in this situa-tion have little chance of returning to school oncethey have dropped out, or of taking a training course,which increases the risk of marginalisation and ex-clusion. Vocational training courses exist, but in theprivate sector they are too expensive and in the newshort-cycle colleges the priority is given to the bestqualified young people, i.e. those who have completedtheir secondary education but have not obtained aplace at university.

The sub-group of unemployed young people includesboth youngsters without a diploma or qualificationsand those with low-level diplomas, together with thosewho have better diplomas but cannot find their firstjob for other reasons, for example the lack of jobs intheir region.

The economic situation in the region is sometimesjust as important as the standard of educationachieved, as shown by several reports7 .

Two CEDEFOP national studies in particular were toa great extent devoted to this subject (Fernández deCastro, De Elejabeitia, 1994; McCarthy, 1994). Theyexamine the problems of the integration of young peo-ple in regions that no longer have their basic economicfabric and traditional employment: the Bilbao estuaryin Spain, where economic decline arrived suddenly,bringing about the collapse of the industrial base (heavyindustry), and the West of Ireland, where small firmsand jobs in the primary sector predominate.

The risk of becoming unemployed and marginaliseddepends to a great extent on the level of qualifica-tions of the individual, but there are other factors aswell (age, sex, ethnic origin), and unemployment isunevenly distributed depending on the region in whicha person grows up and settles. Box 2, for example,lists certain figures that give a good picture of youngpeople in the Mezzogiorno, in southern Italy.

Box 2

Regional differences and aggravating circum-stancesThe Mezzogiorno in Italy

In terms of standards of education and integrationopportunities, there are substantial inequalities in Italy,to the detriment of the South.

School failure indicators (based on the number ofyears that have to be repeated during the period ofcompulsory schooling) are higher in the South thanin northern and central Italy.

Besides the standard of education, factors such assex, age and the lack of economic vitality in the re-gion combine to increase the risk of unemploymentand exclusion in this area.

Unemployment and discrimination by age groups:In general, youngsters aged 14 to 24 are more atrisk of unemployment than older groups.

Unemployment and sex discrimination:In the country as a whole, women of all ages are atgreater risk of unemployment than men.

In 1989, the overall unemployment rate in southernItaly was three times higher than in northern and cen-tral Italy.

The unemployment rate for young men in 1989 was47% in southern Italy, compared with 9% in northernand central Italy.

The rate of unemployment for girls and young womenaged 14 to 24 at the same date was 85% in the Southand 27% in other regions.

7 This is explicit recognition of what has already been pointed out severaltimes in this text: the problem of unemployment is above all a global struc-tural problem, not an inadequate supply of jobs.

21

The Portuguese report (Alveca et al., 1994) on theregion of Setubal (Portugal) depicts a more or lesssimilar pattern of unemployment. Girls and youngwomen are twice as likely to be jobless as are boys(18%, compared with 9%), even though they are rela-tively better trained (one third of girls aged 15 to 27are still in the educational system, compared with onequarter of boys and young men). The youth unem-ployment rate for 15 to 24 year olds in France (1990)was close to 16% , and over 28% in the case of youngwomen. In 1994, 70% of all unemployed young peo-ple in Austria were female.

In most of the national reports throughout Europe,girls and young women are more often placed in thecategory of those ‘becoming marginalised’. This iseven more evident in southern Europe (Spain, Italy,Greece) than in the North. Clearly cultural traditionshave a marked impact in that they help to prolonggender stereotypes and a dichotomy between workinside and outside the home – housework and paidemployment. In southern regions, girls are not alwaysencouraged to pursue their education too long afterthe period of compulsory schooling since a woman’splace is seen as being in the home rather than on thelabour market. Nevertheless, even in the North, quiteapart from the traditional and cultural attitudes thatprevail in the Mediterranean areas, they do not enjoyequal status either. Success at school does not trans-late into equal opportunities in training and in em-ployment.

The German national report published by CEDEFOP(Schweitzer, Wolfinger, 1995) describes the particu-lar difficulties encountered by girls, especially in vo-cational training, in the dual system in which, in prac-tice, few streams of training have been planned fortrades not typically engaged in by males. Even thoughgirls perform just as well in their studies, in generalthey have more difficulty than boys in finding theirfirst jobs or training, both of which need to fit in withtheir family duties. They find it just as hard to obtainspecialist advice. In Denmark, for example, two thirdsof the long-term unemployed are women, eventhough they are not officially recognised as such, asreported by Hurley for Germany in the EurocounselPortfolio of case studies published by the EuropeanFoundation for the Improvement of Living and Work-ing Conditions (1994, p. 74).

The Eurocounsel synthesis report published by theEuropean Foundation for the Improvement of Livingand Working Conditions (Watt, 1997) also places inthis group those who are excluded or on the path toexclusion: the ‘younger old people’ who have had totake early retirement against their will, or those made

11.31.4



22

redundant in mid-life who, in losing all their workingcontacts, also lose their social contacts. This groupneeds to be taken into constant account in that, inview of demographic, economic and social change,the overall reduction in working hours and greaterjob flexibility, etc., it is bound to increase.

CEDEFOP’s synthesis report on the need for voca-tional counselling among different target groups ofyoung people under 28 years of age in the EuropeanCommunity (Chisholm, 1994) and the UK nationalreport (Howieson et al., 1994) also report on the caseof young migrants and those belonging to ethnic mi-norities. They tend to come from economically dis-advantaged groups and their family, social and work-ing networks are not sufficiently complex or firmlyestablished to enable them to find a good job, or moresimply to find work that matches their expectationsand qualifications. In addition, as mentioned in theBelgian national report (Ouali et al., 1994), it is evi-dent that there are wide differences between the jobsdone by immigrants and those performed by the in-digenous population. Immigrants are noticeably ab-sent from public-sector employment and, whateverthe sector, are relegated to the least skilled jobs.

To continue with the Russian doll image touched onat the start of this chapter, besides the general prob-lem requiring a solution, it seems that particular situ-ations need to be taken into account, as they mayimprove – or more often aggravate – a person’s sta-tus and possible itinerary. A young unemployed per-son will no doubt find it far harder to enter the work-ing world if he or she is in a disadvantaged sub-group– for example, young homebound women or the low-skilled – and his or her situation will be even worse ifthat person is in the sub-sub-group of ‘those in anarea of economic decline’.

The different variables (sex, age, ethnic origin, levelof skills, economic activity in the region, etc.), singlyor in combination, contribute towards marginalisation.

The group thus formed is at the intersection betweenthe more dramatic situation of the marginalised and themore advantageous situation of people who are ‘ap-parently problem-free’. Depending on the number andintensity of aggravating circumstances and constraintsor positive personal, occupational or structural factorsentailed, the status of a member of this group may fluc-tuate to his advantage or disadvantage, so that hemoves from one of the main groups cited to another.

For instance, it is evident that people in this group,without being entirely marginalised or excluded fromsociety or the working world, have problems that they

find it hard to solve without outside help. The servicesthat should be generously provided by the support,advisory and/or vocational guidance services very of-ten fluctuate from active measures to prevention.

1.4. Individuals who are ‘apparently problem-free’

More specifically, this group includes young peoplewho have completed their period of education ‘nor-mally’, young workers and wage-earners in general.In the eyes of the support, counselling and guidanceservices whose stated priority is to combat unem-ployment and exclusion, the group does not appearto need to be considered as candidates for or ben-eficiaries of special services.

Nevertheless, trends on the labour market are now inthe direction of greater job flexibility and a growingpressure of demand from people whose diplomas andtraining are at an ever higher level. This implies that itis not necessarily enough to enter the labour marketor to find one’s first job, even if it is relatively stable.Other pressures, needs and concerns may come intobeing. Furthermore, once these services advocatework to help people improve the quality of their livesand take a far broader view than merely the transitionfrom school to work, they might well assume respon-sibility for monitoring people’s progress throughout theirworking lives and in managing other transitions as well(from one job to another, etc.).

As already discussed a little earlier, economic andsocial changes do not simply lead to changes in thelikelihood of finding and holding on to a job. If societyand the labour market change, the values attachedto work and the quality of life will also evolve and bereflected in each person’s practices, expectations,life prospects and plans for the future.

Work is not just a means of securing an income;above all it is a place where one can express oneselfand find fulfilment. In practice, we shall find in thisgroup of ‘apparently problem-free’ people all thosewho, for one reason or another, are not entirely sat-isfied with their current working situation and hope toimprove it.

The group includes not only those at risk of losingtheir present jobs at some time and who need to makepreparations now for this possibility by improving theirskills and qualifications and making themselves com-petitive again on the labour market, but also all thosepeople – adults and those firmly established in theirjobs – who seek opportunities for promotion in theircurrent employment and for bettering themselves intheir personal and working lives.

23

11.41.5

In this group we would also include young – and notso young – workers who are not in the jobs for whichthey have trained, or are in a branch other than theone they would originally have chosen, especiallywhen they are over-qualified for the employment theyhave obtained.

The report on Scotland (Chisholm, 1994; Howiesonet al., 1994) states on this subject that young adults(18-24 year-olds) have similar needs for informationand advice as older adults, for example in looking fora job or obtaining promotion.

From a general viewpoint, the position of such peo-ple does not seem to be dramatic or to call for urgentsupport. Most of them, especially the young people,have qualifications, they have completed their gen-eral or technical and vocational education in second-ary school, many of them have obtained diplomasand even degrees in tertiary education. They havesuccessfully integrated into the labour market. Evenso, they may face two problems:

l either they may up to now have only found tem-porary or part-time jobs, or employment underfixed-term contracts, and have been switchingfrom one job to another with short periods of un-employment in between, which may not be verysignificant but which take their toll, at least on apersonal level;

l or they may have obtained and held onto a job,but one that does not match up to their trainingand qualifications.

The report on youngsters in the West of Ireland(McCarthy, 1994) offers an example of people of thistype who are relatively well educated – having at leastcompleted their secondary education – who, in theabsence of jobs matching their qualifications in theirregion, have to accept subordinate positions. Thereis an almost parallel situation in Greece with thosewho have left with a diploma on completion of theirsecondary education8 but who have not obtained auniversity place.

The question that arises here is not one of integra-tion or reintegration into the labour market. Nor is it aproblem of now having to face the risk of exclusion.If we were to go back to the term of marginalisationas used in the previous two groups, this would be acase of ‘marginalisation by negligence’ (Chisholm,1994, p. 15). Since this particular group is not in acritical situation calling for active measures and sus-tained support, occupational support, counselling andguidance services often take little notice, even though8 We have left this term vague, as there are different situations in eachcountry: it may correspond to the Abitur in Germany, the bachillerato inSpain, etc. Nevertheless, the standard is that of a person emerging fromsecondary education having passed an examination which would normallyallow him or her to go on to university.



24

the group has needs that should be met or lacks thestructures or support and networks it needs to takeadvantage of the help it could use.

Certain projects are being set up in an effort to helppeople in the workplace itself.

This is the case with the VUS pilot project (adult edu-cation subsidies) being developed in Denmark. Itconsists of enhancing people’s daily work and livesin society by incorporating counselling on generaleducation and vocational training into the work envi-ronment itself (Hurley, 1994).

An aspiration and expectation of individuals in thisgroup is more certainly the opportunity to move up-wards. The help that the services concerned couldpromote here is obviously more detailed, but the de-mand exists, it is legitimate and it must be taken intoaccount if a person is not to lose self-confidence orbe trapped in a situation which does not really suithim, in the absence of a better alternative.

1.5. Three groups of people who have beenadversely affected by the economicrecession

The three target groups described above show theextent to which the economic situation is a variablethat aggravates what are already disadvantaged per-sonal and/or social situations. It is clear from all thereports consulted that the difficulties of economic andsocial integration are all the greater for a person with-out a diploma or qualifications, or living in what isregarded as a depressed area, when that person isa woman or a migrant or from an ethnic minority.

The difficulties are all the greater when it comes tofinding a job, but even then it is hard to keep a job.Even those who have found a foothold in the work-ing world may suffer from the effects of the economicsituation (because of the growing flexibility of jobs,etc.), or may hope for and seek (re)integration in amanner closer to their aspirations.

For instance, when the economy suffers everyonesuffers – some more than others – but in all casessolutions have to be found (see Chapter 2) in an ef-fort to combat unemployment or the inherent risk ofexclusion and to improve the quality of life.

Although the level of education and qualifications isand will remain a key factor in the successful transi-tion to employment, besides personal characteris-tics of social value (such as self-respect, motivation,life plans, etc.), it is no longer possible to envisage a

completely linear link between education and employ-ment. Family or social networks are undoubtedly thebest solution in many cases, but they are often nolonger sufficient; outside help is needed in the formof special bodies set up for the purpose, even if theytoo are not always sufficient or are not specific enoughto solve all the problems.

At the level of European, national, regional and localpolicies, it is already accepted that suitable counsel-ling and a process of lifelong learning are vital fac-tors in periods of transition in people’s lives to con-tain the risk of future unemployment and exclusion,and that therefore these services need to be devel-oped (not just as active measures but also on a pre-ventive basis).

Counselling, help and guidance units may thereforebe necessary to support individuals in their transitionperiods. Because of the heterogeneity of the popula-tion groups concerned and the problems they face,there is no one catch-all solution; what can be of-fered is a set of specific services designed to im-prove or change a situation that is seen to be unsat-isfactory or as creating a risk.

25

22.1

Facilitating transition (social,personal and/or occupational)

2. Facilitating transition (social, personaland/or occupational)

Every area of life can be approached through coun-selling. Put simply, every individual has to face a se-ries of many transitions of various types. There is noone ready-made solution to make the path smoother.The needs and demands must be clearly identifiedand analysed in each individual case.

Chapter 1 essentially describes the target groups ofsupport and guidance services. Although Chapter 3is obviously devoted to the services themselves andtheir shortcomings, together with recommendationsfor advice practitioners, the second chapter has themore specific aim of looking at the needs and ex-pectations of young people and adults in to relationthose services and the solutions they can proposeand offer in practice.

While the previous chapter deals with both youngpeople and adults and makes no particular distinc-tion by allocating them to one target group or an-other, in this chapter we focus more on the nature ofthe aid already supplied or to be supplied, and it ispreferable to discuss them separately. Not all theexpectations of the two groups, or the major prob-lems they face at times of transition, are the same.There is no one solution that will suit everyone. Theirneeds and expectations must be clearly identified andanalysed on a case-by-case basis.

All these groups in contact with support, counsellingand guidance units have one factor in common: theirintrinsic difficulties in finding their place in the work-ing world and society and/or in taking full advantageand making the best use of what they have alreadyachieved.

For both groups, the question of personal identityneeds to be tackled, and this will be covered by thevocational support, counselling and guidance units.Nevertheless, on a personal level for example, whilea young person wants to construct an identity, in thecase of an adult it is more accurate to talk about ‘re-construction’. The services to be provided, therefore,will differ.

In the same way, at the socio-occupational level, theproblem facing a young person will usually be that ofaccess to employment, especially a first job – in otherwords taking the first step on the labour market. Thesystem to be tackled, then, is the transition fromschool to employment. For an adult, the question oftransition is far more related to rejoining and leavingthe labour market following periods of unemployment


26

and/or the move from one job to another. Here theproblem is more specifically one of reintegration.

There are similarities, which will be pointed out, butthese are in fact two very different types of transitionand they cannot be lumped together. The needsthemselves are different, as are the practical stepsto be taken and the objectives, even though ultimatelythe principles and the concerns expressed are com-parable.

There are also similarities in the expectations andneeds of the two groups, since in both cases what isfaced is transition. Furthermore, as pointed out in theprevious chapter, for certain groups – essentiallymarginalised people in need of integration – accessto employment is the culmination of a whole processof aid, one that may be directed to both young peo-ple and the less young. Although the two groups arediscussed separately, both the similarities and thedivergences will become apparent in the course ofthe discussion, in terms of the aid that is provided bythe counselling and guidance units which, in certaincases, may overlap.

2.1. The specific question of vocationalintegration

The inadequacy of the jobs on offer remains the es-sential cause of unemployment. When vacancies dooccur, to be successful in obtaining the job one firstneeds to gain confidence in oneself. This also re-quires an acknowledgement of the world around one-self and a knowledge of the world of work. In otherwords, what is needed is to help young people totake their place in society.

The problem of vocational integration is more spe-cifically related to school-leavers with or without di-plomas or vocational qualifications.

They are to be found in all three of the target groupsalready defined, and the response to be offered bycounselling and guidance services will need to begeared to the specific position of each person, irre-spective of the fact that he or she has just left school.A youngster who is ‘apparently problem-free’, forexample, who has obtained a school-leaving diplomaand who then finds a job, will not necessarily be inneed of ‘social construction’. He will no doubt alreadyhave a family setting, friends, and a social and occu-pational environment that will suffice for his personaldevelopment. On the other hand, if he does not havea job that matches his expectations, he may need tobe remotivated, his confidence restored, so that hecan make better use of what he has already achieved

and can move up the ladder. A young person whohas lost his bearings must first renew his social linksand/or find a way of life that more or less complieswith the ‘norm’ before he can envisage vocationalintegration.

The three points raised in this section, then, shouldbe taken into account to a varying extent dependingon the individual’s personal life and development.They reflect the three types of knowledge or exper-tise that an individual must acquire to facilitate voca-tional integration:

l self-knowledge and self-recognition (self-esteem),

l knowledge of the world around him and his placein society,

l knowledge of the working world and the likelihoodthat he can compete on this market.

There is a logical order in the presentation of thesepoints, although it should be borne in mind that theyare closely linked and that they interact: a personwithout much self-confidence but who enjoys socialrecognition will gradually acquire confidence throughthe image of himself reflected back by others. In thesame way, an outsider parachuted into a job in anunfamiliar environment will in the end create an iden-tity for himself from his work and by building up aworking and social networks, even a network offriends.

Not everyone necessarily goes through these threestages, or needs all the services discussed here tothe same extent. Nevertheless, in the present eco-nomic situation, it is likely that everyone at some timeor another can derive advantage from this type ofservice.

2.1.1. The personal dimension: encouragingself-esteem and determination

As a recommendation, there is a prerequisite herewhich is beyond the control of advisory measures:people have to make themselves known if they areto be counselled. But the key word is still motivationor, more commonly, remotivation.

For a young person entering the working world, fail-ing to find a job is often seen as tantamount to rejec-tion and exclusion. He has no money, no right to con-sume, no adult status. He will lose status in his owneyes and rapidly cut himself off from society unlesshe receives help and is given the necessary confi-dence to face reality with greater equanimity, to be-

27

22.1 come a part of the world around him and to take re-sponsibility for his own future.

This work of personal mobilisation relates to the threetarget groups identified in the first section9 . It is theprerequisite for any integration and any project, evenif it is not work-related.

Although at first sight it may be difficult to relate strictlypersonal characteristics – like self-esteem and self-confidence – and entering the labour market, this ini-tial form of aid provided by counselling units is vital,as it is the first contact and the starting point for everyother measure.

One of the first steps for counselling and guidanceunits and the various bodies in the field, then, is totake the time to listen and talk. The next step is todraw up a more or less formal audit of the person’scompetences (Box 3) and plans in order find out atleast what he has achieved and the way he perceivesthose achievements so that he can build up his con-fidence and faith in his potential.

Whatever the standard of education and competitiveability of the individual on the labour market, thepresent economic situation and economic difficultiesoften mean that, after a few unsuccessful attemptsto find a job or merely after rejection, he just gives upand goes down in his own estimation, not just in termsof work but above all as a person.

Most of the CEDEFOP reports (see bibliography)refer to this state of affairs. Young people are morelikely to be unemployed or in temporary jobs thanolder people. To avoid unemployment, some of themdefer the time of moving on from education to a joband extend their studies after the period of compul-sory education. The choice is not always entirely de-liberate, but often arises from a fear of unemploy-ment and the idea that training has the advantage ofleading to a better first job. This is true, even thoughthe move is not always one way (from education ortraining to employment), and now more rarely thanever does it lead directly to a secure job. The ab-sence of an appropriate economic base which mayensue from extended studies may in fact delay theacquisition of financial independence and personalautonomy – the diploma of adulthood! Youngsterswill then also put off the time of leaving the familyhome, starting families of their own and assumingresponsibility for their actions and their own lives.

The role of counselling and guidance services is thenessentially to encourage active citizenship (see3.1.2.), make the youngsters take steps on their own9 Marginalised people to be (re)integrated, those in the process ofmarginalisation and the ‘apparently problem-free’.



29

account, participate in rewarding activities even if theyare unpaid, evaluate their own potential and decidetogether on their plans for the future and practicalways of implementing those plans. Neighbourhoodcouncils, local missions, etc., are better placed thananyone else in this field to gauge the personality of ayoung person coming to them and to indicate whatsteps are needed to remobilise and acquire freshmotivation and confidence.

The steps taken do not automatically lead to a job.Many services take the precaution of briefing theirusers on what they can expect to achieve.

The French report on the northern districts of Mar-seilles (CIBC, 1996), in discussing the local initiativeentitled ‘Action mobilisation jeunes – métiers du spec-tacle’, launched in 1995, clearly states that:

‘Young people are warned against the ‘illusions’ thatthey might form as regards the term ‘entertainment’.They are not being trained for qualifications in thearts, even technical qualifications, since a very highlevel of skill is required in this field, . . . but this con-text must be used for the purpose of imparting dy-namic impetus and finding a job . . through the workof self-discovery in the world of the arts, in other wordsan entirely different environment’. (p. 54)

The priority of the measures designed to promoteself-esteem should be to reach people classified asmarginalised and in need of reintegration, since inte-gration in society and the working world must bebased on reconstruction of oneself. It is hard, how-ever, to provide this aid and support to the very peo-ple who need it most: youngsters who have lost theirbearings and have no fixed abode just because theyno longer belong to any network or neighbourhoodor structure that really serves their needs. As statedin the European Foundation for the Improvement ofLiving and Working Conditions Eurocounsel final re-port (Watt, 1997), in discussing the long-term unem-ployed, better results are achieved when the serv-ices are not compulsory, even though an element ofobligation may be useful as it could encourage a per-son who has lost all his motivation to return to a formof useful activity.

The issue here, then, is for the young person to takethe time to come to terms with himself and with theoutside world (something that should be viewed inconjunction with the next point, 2.1.2), through posi-tive experiences. For instance, he could construct aplan and embark on a route – one that will lead towork (see 2.1.3.).

2.1.2. Networking

However effective the effort to intermediate on thelabour market or in matters of advice and guidance,people must be helped to discern and activate theirown networks. The way personal networks are mo-bilised very often determines whether a person is in-tegrated into the working world, and always deter-mines integration in society.

This question of establishing networks follows natu-rally on the previous chapter. Once an individual hasforged his own identity, has constructed himself, hasacquired self-assurance, it is equally necessary thathe is able to gain recognition for those qualities in hissociety.

In turn, the creation of social networks promotes agood self-image and helps a person go even further.Self-confidence and confidence in his own potential,however, are not always enough to enter the workingworld, and the need for outside help may be evident.The creation of networks on the initiative of voca-tional support, counselling and guidance services maybe effective along these lines.

School-leavers often have no experience of the la-bour market, or even any concept of the meanswhereby they can gain access to it. The ‘training =employment’ equation is no longer true, and diplo-mas and qualifications are not always sufficient forsocial and occupational self-fulfilment. Education –especially general education – is usually dispensedin hermetically sealed surroundings, without any realcontact with the workplace and the working world,and young people rarely have a foretaste of whatawaits them. They need to go outside for help. Andeven if a young person is trained for a job – as clearlyshown by the national reports (especially the Belgianreport, Ouali et al., 1994) – the link between the train-ing that has been received and the job ultimately foundis very weak.

A person will first turn to family networks (as testifiedin particular by the Belgian and the Irish national re-ports - Ouali et al., 1994, and McCarthy, 1994). Evenso, the more economically disadvantaged the familya person comes from, the narrower and less opera-tive will the network be. Here we find the system ofsocial reproduction widely described by sociologists.The same system is found, moreover, at every level.The Danish national report (Maaløe, 1994) states,for example, that a third of young people are on thelabour market with a school qualification but not avocational qualification, and those who are from un-skilled or unemployed families are over-represented

29

in this group. The counselling and guidance units mayin many cases act as intermediaries, as bridges, be-tween the young person, his social milieu and thelabour market.

This social integration and networking is especiallyimportant when young people have ‘an image thatdoes not export well outside the place where theylive’, as the French report on the Marseilles case studyputs it (CIBC, 1996).

One of the most interesting examples is the mentoringsystem to be found in the northern districts of Mar-seilles (Box 4). Based on the same principle as ap-prentice-masters in apprenticeship, this consists ofgiving an adult – in this case someone who is retired– the responsibility of helping and guiding young peo-ple at risk of marginalisation in their personal andworking lives. The ‘parrain’, or ‘godfather’, as he isknown here is in a sense half way between an insti-tution and the family. He has more time to spare thanany formal structure and can pass on the benefit ofhis experience in the working world and in the net-work he has created for himself over the years. Withthis mentoring, support and advice, the young per-son acquires what could be regarded as ‘norms ofbehaviour’ that make him more socially acceptable.He rapidly builds up his own personal or even work-ing network, adding to the likelihood of rapid andsatisfactory integration.

For the individual to benefit from the help of counsel-ling and guidance services in creating a personalnetwork, those structures must themselves haveworked on forming such links. They are of variouskinds, for example links with the authorities and localcommunities or the local labour market through em-ployers (see 3.2.2.).

2.1.3. Making the best use of what one haslearned

Helping young people to persuade potential employ-ers is a vital factor. Few people are recruited to thekind of job that corresponds to the special field forwhich they have been trained. Jobs are so scarcethat accepting a post that does not make use of one’sskills is an option that should not necessarily be dis-missed. On the other hand, young people must bepersuaded to waste no time in making theircompetences known. Above all, those who have hadtechnical or vocational training must also know howto make good use of what they have learned.

To offset the problems associated with employmentand the difficulties of entering the working world, vari-

22.1



30

ous Education Ministries have been attempting foryears, it seems, with a greater or lesser degree ofsuccess, to adapt school education to today’s world,in which employment is in even shorter supply andmore fragmented. This effort to adapt does not al-ways bear fruit, and in many cases there is still awide gap between what has been taught and whatpotential employers expect. Schools rarely provide a‘user’s manual’ for the labour market and, in the sameway, a school-leaver is seldom ‘job-ready’.

One of the main difficulties encountered by youngpeople on their arrival on the labour market is how toput over what they have achieved. This is a vital fac-tor for people who have few qualifications to offer. Itis also valuable to the people we have classified as‘apparently problem-free’.

The Irish national report (McCarthy, 1994), for ex-ample, points out that many young people have highlevels of education and qualifications – the only real-istic grounds for hoping to establish oneself firmly inthe working world. Even so, the education receivedand diplomas obtained are not advanced enough orclose enough to the needs and demands of the la-bour market to make it easy for them to obtain em-ployment. This means that, after secondary educa-tion, they may well sign up for other educationalcourses or adult education or work experience pro-grammes. This ‘extra’ training is for many people away of avoiding or at least deferring unemployment.It is seen more as a ‘waiting room’ for a job ratherthan as providing real hopes of additional training –although it does promote the better use of what hasalready been acquired.

Apart from this question of the sometimes blatantmismatch between education and employment, withthe young person not having received the skills andexpertise from which he might have benefited, thetypes of education whose primary purpose is to im-part a particular occupational skill have to an extentdepreciated in value. In general, vocational educa-tion is rarely a first choice for a young person, and forthis reason is widely under-valued.

The Luxembourg national report (Fandel, Pauwels,1994), for example, clearly shows that those who takeup an apprenticeship after the ninth year of educa-tion do so because they did not obtain high enoughgrade to go on to the tenth year. Most of CEDEFOP’sstudies also point to the same finding, especially theFrench, Greek and Netherlands reports (CIBC, 1996;Zanni-Teliopoulou, Stathakopoulou, 1995;Wijnaendts van Resandt, 1994).

The distinction all too often made between generaleducation and technical and vocational educationleads to a value judgement that is detrimental to ayoung person who has opted for the technical/voca-tional streams. He lacks confidence in his own worthand finds it hard to convey his merits, to ‘sell him-self’. He will also make a negative association be-tween vocational guidance and his current situationand with educational selection, and therefore his ex-clusion from the educational system.

On the other hand, those in general education enjoygreater recognition (the reason why they are often over-looked by guidance units). Even so, many people leaveschool before completing their secondary education andwithout any preparation for work or a vocational qualifi-cation, which in the end puts them at a particular disad-vantage at the time of entering the working world un-less they can find a way of optimising and adding to theknowledge they have already acquired.

Counselling and guidance services have envisagedvarious projects to help young people make good useof their experience, or at least their knowledge. Al-lowance is obviously made for the level already ob-tained and the individual’s potential and realistic pros-pects of upward mobility.

At an early stage, one of the initiatives that may,among other things, help young people to becomeaware of their own value and potential could be theskills audit and portfolio of competences (Box 3),which at the least helps to ‘review’ what has beenachieved and what one might hope to do with thatachievement.

Box 3

Audits and portfolios of competences

The personal and vocational audit is a dynamic, tar-geted and global measure. Its form and content aredictated by the goal pursued, i.e. the social and vo-cational integration of an individual, enabling him orher to satisfy personal aspirations and make a con-tribution to economic, cultural and social develop-ment.

In an audit as much information as possible aboutoneself is gathered, and then a good hard look istaken at the conclusions, thinking about what re-sources should be used to construct and implementone’s plans for social and vocational integration.

The phases of the audit are arranged to fit in witheach beneficiary’s special needs.

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In the investigatory phase, the aim is to ‘discern andidentify the individual’s experience and intellectual andoccupational potential, and evaluate his personal andvocational competence in terms of knowledge, ex-pertise and attitudes’ so that he can later ‘build up aset of relevant factors that may make a vocationaland personal project more feasible and organise pri-orities of actions and strategies for the realisation ofthe goals he has set himself in the short and mediumterm’.

The portfolio of competences is a tool that sets acontinuing process in motion: the young person isencouraged to continue with the analysis, and to col-lect and keep evidence of his experience, which inturn causes him to take a different view of the routehe is taking and to set greater store by it.

Source: CIBC Marseilles – Centre interinstitutionnel de bilans decompétences (1996).

When the difficulty arises of obtaining a permanentjob, this portfolio of competences helps the youngperson to put together a coherent account of his ex-perience, or at least to show it to its best advantagehowever fragmented.

The same process is to be found with adults, aspointed out by Hurley (1994) in discussing a casestudy in Italy. The subject is the use of a vocationalaudit to reinforce participants’ individual motivationby identifying ways of making people more ‘market-able’. Along the same lines is the ‘jobseeker’s diary’scheme in Barcelona (Hurley, 1994).

Periods abroad are often presented as enhancingskills already acquired and enriching them throughnew experiences. The better qualified are more likelyto go abroad – no doubt because they already havemore self-confidence or because travel to othercountries is more customary in their family or socialenvironment (the theory of cultural capital). CEDEFOP’sconsolidated report on determining the need for vo-cational counselling among different target groupsof young people under 28 years of age in the Euro-pean Community (Chisholm, 1994) points out thatfor many people, especially the least skilled, thisprovides an opportunity to convert negative socialsituations into positive experience and prospects. Itappears that adding a European dimension to ayoung person’s experience helps to give credibilityto the experience he has acquired in the eyes of anemployer. Even so, it should be borne in mind thatyoung people do not envisage lengthy periodsabroad and usually try to construct a life plan in theirown national or regional or more local environment,

22.12.2



32

the aim being greater stability and security in theirfutures.

Good initial training and better presentation of one’sachievements and skills should help to reduce therisk of youth unemployment and exclusion. But suc-cessful integration in society and the working worldno longer implies working for the same company forlife. For instance, a person may, either by choice orby constraint, of his own free will or due to adverseeconomic conditions, still have to face transition prob-lems all through his life.

Although the question of how young people can en-ter the labour market is important and should not beoverlooked by the authorities, the issue of transitionis just as likely to improve or prejudice an adult’s pros-pects, and deserves the particular attention of theauthorities and the vocational support, counsellingand guidance services.

2.2. The question of reintegration

When it comes to occupational reintegration, it is nolonger just young people who are involved. The widevariety of groups affected means that measures mustbe differentiated according to far more criteria. Para-doxically, there should no longer be any doubt aboutthe value of preceding actual recruitment by job-re-lated activities – voluntary or socially useful work –which help to establish a working rhythm and a properattitude to work.

The question of occupational reintegration is far morespecific to adults who have already had a job but havelost it. The reasons may be many and varied. Theymay have been made redundant by a company goingout of business or by the downsizing of a workforce. Acraftsman or the owner of a small business may havebecome insolvent. It is also a problem for people whohave taken early retirement, or housebound womenwho have given up work to bring up their children andfind it hard to return to a job once they have shed someof their family responsibilities, etc.

The primary stated objective is still to combat unem-ployment and to promote equal opportunities. Vari-ous national policies advocate different ways of tack-ling the problem. In some countries, the priority isplaced on what have been called methods of ‘activa-tion’ 10 (see 3.1.2.); in others, it is on social employ-ment programmes (see 2.2.2.) or the granting of sub-sidies to employers for taking on unemployed peo-ple, or both at the same time. One of the key solu-tions is to invest in vocational training and to developa policy designed to promote lifelong training. ‘Re-

freshing’ and updating skills are vital here, and infor-mation and counselling services advocate this proc-ess of continuing education and training. The pur-pose of advice, then, is to give people as a minimumthe tools they will need to cope with the various tran-sitions in their working lives.

Finding a full-time paid job may be the outcome ofcounselling, but for certain participants this will notnecessarily be the end objective. There is a need, then,to formulate various measures in response to the widevariety of groups affected by long-term unemployment:they may be young people, especially those with fewdiplomas or none, women, older workers, etc.

But, although the situations encountered by these dif-ferent types of people differ, the consequences areoften the same. Whether they are temporary unem-ployed, long-term unemployed or in early retirement,the immediate observation is that they feel badlyabout their situation and have at one and the sametime lost their working, personal and social points ofreference. Obviously, efforts must be made to rem-edy the problem in the light of each individual situa-tion. The response will differ depending on the age,needs, living conditions, experience, knowledge andexpertise of each group, but in all cases the support,counselling and guidance services must be able toreduce the risk of exclusion and/or self-marginalisationand to help a person regain a social role – through ajob-related activity, paid or unpaid, that will give ac-cess, or fresh access, to a better quality of life.

2.2.1. Reacquiring a social role

Here the main recommendation is to help people re-gain a feeling of being useful. Working in the volun-tary sector is in line with this thinking.

This expedient, whose aim is to confer a new socialrole, is above all presented as a process of socialisationor resocialisation. It will be directed as a priority to-wards marginalised people who need to be reinte-grated or, more probably, those who are unlikely tobe able to return to the labour market or who do nothave a vital need to do so, as in the case of peopleretiring early. Some will also place in this grouphomebound women who are not heads of house-holds. People need help first of all with emerging fromtheir isolation and regaining confidence in them-selves, becoming ‘useful’ once again and creating anetwork of personal relationships. To a great extentthis personal and social reconstruction is achievedby participating in a work-related activity, or several,depending on a person’s specific needs and circum-stances, through the voluntary sector.

10 Basically the term is used in Denmark (Hurley, 1994)

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22.2 This concept of voluntary work may be poorly receivedor even rejected by people with pressing financialneeds, but it is one of the main occupations suggestedto people who have retired early and find it some-what hard to drop out entirely from the working worldbut have sufficient income to meet their day-to-dayneeds.

Voluntary work may take different forms and relateto several types of activity, sometimes in very differ-ent sectors. The case of the ‘mentors’ in the north-ern districts of Marseilles has been mentioned in thisconnection. The action is described in Box 4.

Box 4

‘Parrainage’

This arrangement is the outcome of a partnershipbetween CIRRSE – Caisse interprofessionnelle deretraite par répartition du sud est – and the local mis-sion for the 15th and 16th districts of Marseilles, fol-lowing the creation of the ‘Générations solidarités’association in 1993.

Retired people from every occupational sector arewilling to act, without pay, as mentors to young un-employed people and other youngsters in difficulty.The idea is to mobilise the older person’s experienceof life and human relations and place it at the serviceof young people at risk of marginalisation.

In no way does this voluntary work imply amateur-ism. Eighteen retired people have already ‘worked’in the northern districts of Marseilles and have actedas mentors to 147 youngsters.

They can use facilities on premises with office equip-ment, computers, Minitel, etc., and undergo trainingin the ‘skilled trade’ of mentoring, so that they canfind the best response to the needs of the youngsterwhom they decide to take on, with the help of thelocal mission. The training is in the form of five mod-ules, in half-day sessions, covering youth integrationmeasures, the problems of disadvantaged districts,young people’s difficulties and exclusion and whatthey need to do to monitor their ‘godchild’. The workteam tries to match the vocational route taken by ayoung person and his or her aspirations with the men-tor’s life experience.

Mentoring lasts an average of three to six months,with the older and younger person meeting once ortwice a week.



34

The mentor’s main contribution is to instil confidence.This is done by giving advice and moral support, forexample technical help with producing a curriculumvitae or a letter of application. Another task is to helpthe person about to enter the labour market to presenthimself better, for instance through role-playing andsimulating job interviews so that the youngster cre-ates a good impression. Here again, the mentorneeds to the extent possible to build up a set of ref-erences for the youngster so that he will be thoroughlyfamiliar with the working world and how a companyoperates, know more about the nature of the variousdepartments in a company, how to look at a pay slipor a contract of employment, etc. He also does hisbest to use his own network of relationships on be-half of the young person.

In certain more challenging cases, mentors attendmeetings of the local technical committees to briefthem on the young person’s progress. They regu-larly fill in forms to inform the local mission of thesteps being taken and changes in the young person’sattitude.

Apart from the fact of creating a social link that willenable different generations to understand each otherand provide mutual support, the results appear en-couraging. The retired people gain a sense of beinguseful, the young ones acquire greater confidenceand seem to find it easier to obtain work. This meas-ure has now become part of the ‘Youthstart’ pro-gramme and may be transferred to certain other coun-tries in the European Community, Ireland and Fin-land in particular.

Source: CIBC, 1996.

If full-time employment is no longer a realistic aspi-ration and the practical likelihood of finding a job againis virtually nil, it seems that voluntary work can pro-vide an occupation which, while not gainful employ-ment, may well be personally enriching. The aimabove all is to activate citizens and encourage themto take up a varied range of activities, so that theycan cope better with the transitions of life (see sec-tion 3). This work may also be to convey the benefitof one’s own experience to others.

Although this type of activity is essentially the prov-ince of those who have taken early retirement andfor whom a return to paid work is out of the question,it is also suggested to people whose absolute priorityis to re-establish human relationships before goingahead with the process of occupational reintegration.This measure is of value provided that the individualdoes not forfeit unemployment benefits, etc. It helps

him to acquire some discipline, since even voluntarywork makes certain demands in terms of attendance,stamina and the acceptance of personal responsibil-ity. It is obvious, however, that this should not be seenas a long-term activity for people who really need apaid job. Besides voluntary work – or after a periodof voluntary work – other steps should be taken tohelp a person return to the working world and soci-ety. Sometimes it is the voluntary work itself whichmay lead to retraining and a return to the workingworld.

This concept features in particular in the case ofCILOs – local employment initiatives in Piedmont inItaly – where, backed by a small core of permanentstaff who are trained in giving advice, very many vol-untary workers are also active. They undertake ashort training course in providing support to the ad-viser, which they can subsequently extend if they wish.A more or less similar system exists in Spain withthe Fundació Trinijove in Barcelona – a young peo-ple’s mutual aid organisation – which is run on a chari-table basis, mainly by people who, after taking partin certain activities as users, identify with the workbeing done and offer their services as leaders (inperiods of work experience, for example).

2.2.2. Temporary reintegration

Public policy measures on employment also have aplace in this context. They should be seen as a tran-sition phase, for example in the move towards em-ployment or towards retirement.

In this chapter on temporary reintegration, severaltypes of measure may be considered by an individualand by the occupational support, counselling andguidance services. They are not all on the same level.This very broad set of measures may include peri-ods of work experience – paid or unpaid – and socialwork, temporary replacement work within a companyor organisation, training courses, which may or maynot lead to a qualification, or brief periods of work ortraining abroad.

Clearly a paid work placement cannot be treated ona par with an unpaid placement. In the same way, atraining course that leads to a qualification will havea different impact and be more highly regarded thana course that does not. Even so, such measures ingeneral and social work in particular often serve asthe first step towards employment. More and more itis accepted that social employment is a necessarystage in reintegrating the long-term unemployed onthe labour market.

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22.2 Even though a work placement is not always paid, itvery often enables a person to establish, or redis-cover, the pace of work and a certain discipline. So-cial employment is a more direct part of programmesof ‘public utility work’, as established by governments,and is associated with which has been called ‘theintermediate labour market’.

Neither type of work will always offer the hope of mov-ing up the ladder, but sometimes they help by provid-ing fresh experience of which an individual can makegood use later on. The group that benefits from thesemeasures is varied: the long-term unemployed, orwomen who want to or have to return to work, or youngpeople, most of whom are low-skilled or unskilled.Social employment may also be a stage in the tran-sition to retirement.

This is one aspect of the services provided by coun-selling and labour mobility management describedin the case study on the province of Trento in Italy(Hurley, 1994), where what are regarded as ‘sociallyuseful jobs’ have been created, the aim being to makeuse of the surrounding resources for older unem-ployed people. The workers are employed by coop-eratives until they reach the minimum retirement age.

The occupational support, counselling and guidanceservices must in all cases be capable of offering thebest possible advice to individuals on the prospectsopen to them and to the likelihood that they will leadto vocational integration.

The problem that arises here, if it is a problem, is thatthe value of this type of measure is to restore a per-son’s self confidence, enable him to return to a workingsituation and obtain sufficient qualifications to adapt toit, but it must above all provide access to a stable, sat-isfying post. As pointed out in the Irish report (McCarthy,1994), going to counselling and guidance services andfollowing their recommendations are useful only if thereis a prospect of a job at the end; if not, it is just a wasteof time. But current conditions on the labour marketand the fact that counselling practitioners often knowtoo little about the local market mean that a job is notalways a certainty – far from it.

One particular initiative caught our attention in thisrespect: the VUS in Fakse in Denmark. It has theadvantage of providing additional training for thosein work and at the same time offers work experienceto the unemployed (Box 5).



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Box 5

Rotation of employment and trainingThe case of the VUS in Denmark

This State-funded programme enables employees,particularly those with a low level of education, to takegeneral adult education courses and vocational train-ing for 4 to 36 weeks.

During this study and training sabbatical, participantsreceive a Government weekly grant. In many cases,to ensure that there is no loss of earnings, the em-ployers make compensatory payments to top up thepay of the person being trained.

Simultaneously, the workers being trained are re-placed by the long-term unemployed, who are paidthe same as the person for whom they are standingin.

This employment rotation formula has several ad-vantages: :

l the long-term unemployed acquire work experi-ence which may perhaps be put to use later on;

l the employee obtains training, which may help himin his advancement;

l employers obtained better qualified and more mo-tivated workers.

Source: Hurley, 1994.

Initiatives combining advice and guidance with so-cial employment programmes like those developedin Ireland (Hurley, 1994; McCarthy, 1994) have alsoshown the benefits that can be derived from suchmeasures. They give a person renewed self-confi-dence and a chance to attend training or generalcourses as well as possibly opening the door to freshprospects, for instance retraining for a different jobor for self-employment.

2.2.3. Reintegration in a different setting

Again with the idea of broadening the range of op-portunities, the jobs market must not be the sole fo-cus of interest; encouragement must be given toseeking out new opportunities. Setting up one’s ownbusiness is a possible route.

Apart from attempting to help people to re-enter theworking world and take up a job that already existsand that has been vacant or falls vacant, support,

counselling and guidance units may also have therole of encouraging private initiative and the creationof new enterprise and jobs.

This encouragement for finding new opportunitiesoutside the traditional labour market is one aspect ofthe service that seems to pose problems for manypractitioners, and it is a question that will be consid-ered in the part on their training and functions (see3.2.4.). Very many practitioners feel they are not in aposition to provide such services as they lack theappropriate knowledge; they specialise more in train-ing or job placement than in business creation, eventhough this is also an alternative way of returning towork.

The Spanish case study (especially the study by theFundació Trinijove in Barcelona) carried out underthe European Foundation for the Improvement of Liv-ing and Working Conditions Eurocounsel programme(Watt, 1997), reviews the services and support thatexist in abundance for people wanting to start up theirown businesses. Counselling takes the form of pro-viding information that will help to solve the practicalproblems that arise when one wants to set up on one’sown, and in some cases training in business man-agement (although this is usually restricted to thoseholding diplomas in management and economicsrather than the unemployed). The practitioners oftenknow too little about the local market and do not haveenough practical information on the situation and in-dustry of the future to offer really effective support.

This type of project, however, seems to be growingin favour with the authorities. As it is often difficult to‘jump in at the deep end’ (for financial, practical andother reasons), certain countries have set up a sys-tem under which people can become self-employedbut still be entitled to their social and various otherbenefits, at least for the first year. Other countries,such as Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany,also offer financial support programmes designed tohelp the unemployed set up their own businesses.

This is also the case in the province of Trento in Italy,where the employment centre is trying to promotejob creation by granting subsidies and other servicesto support people wishing to set up on their own ac-count, either creating small businesses or working inpartnership with others (in cooperatives for exam-ple). These various programmes, including in par-ticular the programme of grants for the creation ofregional enterprises (AAES), tend to be run by re-gional undertakings and the Ministry for Social Pro-tection. In many cases here the advisory units act ascatalysts, or more simply as mediators.

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22.2 Apart from job creation and offering the opportunityof self-employment (although in the province of Trentothis has applied to only 3% of ex-unemployed peo-ple), this chapter on integration in a different settingor vocational retraining could also include all themeasures promoting training for different kinds ofwork and changes in the direction of the skills ac-quired or to be acquired.

We have already touched on one of the problems forwhich people seek occupational support, counsel-ling and guidance: before suggesting training or aretraining course in a particular sector, it is vital thatthe practitioners should have been able to assessthe situation on the local labour market and the op-portunities that might be created there. They alsoneed to be capable of evaluating the motivation andcompetence of individuals so that they will opt forwhat is realistically a suitable solution for them. Theconfidence-building and audits of competence thatwe have already discussed are often among the firststeps to be taken, perhaps the starting point in anyapproach.

This is an example provided by the case study onPostalmarket in Milan (Hurley, 1994). The concept iseven more innovatory in that it was created on theinitiative of the company itself and to an extent by itsemployees. (Box 6).

Box 6

Encouraging a change in activitiesThe case of Postalmarket

Postalmarket is a mail order company going througha period of major financial difficulties, which meansthat it has to make staff redundant and alter the workit does. A preventive advisory unit has been set upwithin the company to do what it can for the future ofits employees, training them and directing them to-wards a different kind of job that would meet theirneeds and be within their capability.

The first phase has been to help them to arrive at aself-assessment of their skills and expertise, and toassert their identities by pinpointing their workingactivities and experience.

The next step is jointly to produce an occupationalaudit, highlighting their strengths and weaknessesso that they can launch into a process of vocationaltraining directed towards a placement on the com-pany’s own internal market or another job on the out-side market, with the help of a work grant.



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At first this process made relatively heavy weather.Some people agreed to go to outside recruitment in-terviews but changed their minds at the last moment.During the first phase, it was noted that stereotypedideas, fear and ingrained habits prevailed and thatattitudes were very conservative. It was also founddifficult to teach workers to take decisions, assessthemselves and clearly identify their work experienceand expertise – they were not accustomed to suchanalytical processes.

Nevertheless, after advice, help with producing CVs,information on labour market legislation, the seekingout of opportunities and the imparting of motivationby some of the company’s employees who succeededin mobilising the personnel as a whole, the case studynotes that in general, the attitude of all the partici-pants in the programme changed radically. Many ofthem were starting to take steps for themselves, tolook for work, and others wanted to return to study-ing (Hurley, 1994).

The process of retraining, then, seems to have beensuccessfully launched for each party.

In the course of these two chapters, there are clearlinks between the various points covered, and there-fore the services to be provided; it is also clear thatthe occupational support, counselling and guidanceservices – public or private – do not offer the sametype of services and support as any official authority.Here we seem to be moving from what might at firstseem a logic based on gateways to one that is basedon projects.

There can be no one packaged solution to be of-fered to every person coming for help. There aregeneral concepts (the ‘Russian dolls’ concept alreadydescribed) and main courses of action to be takendepending on the overall position of the individual ortarget group in question, but apart from these gen-eral trends all the parameters of an individual’s per-sonal, social and working life must be taken into ac-count in order to provide whatever service is bestsuited to each person’s particular situation. The so-lutions and recommendations to be offered are di-rected along these lines.

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33.1

Institutional solutions:personalising help, advice andguidance _ looking ahead to themedium- or long-term future

3. Institutional solutions:personalising help, advice and guidance –looking ahead to the medium- or long-termfuture

The concept of prevention underlies every measureto help individuals not at immediate risk of unem-ployment or exclusion. This is a fairly recent approachinternationally, coinciding with what the EuropeanUnion sees as medium- or long-term actions, suchas lifelong training or advice and assistance even forpeople who are in employment. For instance, appre-ciating the value of continuing training is in itself aprotection against future risks of unemployment orbeing stuck in a dead-end job.

Among the recent issues, the private provision ofadvisory services highlights the funding of this formof intervention, and creates a risk that only peoplewith sufficient financial resources have access to it.

In taking an overall look in this chapter at the prob-lem of how vocational support, advice and guidancesystems operate at European level and in institutionalterms, methodological problems arise: it cannot beclaimed that this study in itself is empirically exhaus-tive or of general application. Young Europeans, liketheir elders, are not socially, economically or cultur-ally homogeneous groups. The target groups identi-fied are themselves fairly permeable, each one fac-ing widely differing situations in its own environment,the conditions for its development and success vary-ing a good deal. Occupational support, advice andguidance systems within the European Union are alsovery diverse, even within the same region or town,and cannot easily be transferred from one context toanother. Such services cannot therefore avail them-selves of a universally applicable policy; they cannotbe based on generally applicable models or providesimple, straightforward results and solutions that allpoint in the same direction.

Within this economic, social and cultural diversity,however, there do seem to be recurring themes andproblems, valid procedures that deserve to be high-lighted and particular shortcomings to be tackled, andthese should help with the formulation of strategiesfor the development of such services and with creat-ing a Community policy on education, training, inte-gration and access or return to employment or anyother job-related activity. The purpose of this policyshould be to reach the greatest number of people, toraise levels of skills among manual workers, improvethe quality of life and help to combat the precariousnature of work, unemployment and marginalisation.While the policy should be formulated in general

Institutional solutions:personalising help, advice and guidance _ lookingahead to the medium- or long-term future

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terms at European and national level, in its subse-quent implementation it should be adapted to regionaland local contexts.

Among the general recommendations set out here,one is that these services must be more within thereach of individuals and look at a person’s social con-text; employment, training and special and one-offhelp should no longer be considered as unrelated toother aspects of life. No doubt there is a need to im-prove even further the image of education and train-ing – especially technical and vocational – and to pro-mote the ongoing assessment of what the servicesprovide and how they adapt to the needs and de-mands of all parties, including those under Europe-wide programmes. Lastly, these services and whatthey provide need to be given a fresh status: theyshould not be first-aid measures for social monitor-ing and managing people, brought to bear once aproblem has taken root, but a lifelong mentoring ac-tivity. Because of this, the recommendations mustput forward a more global, positive, personalised,multidisciplinary and active approach, as will be dis-cussed more specifically in the chapters that follow.

Given the impossibility of guaranteeing access toemployment, it is clear – as already pointed out atthe start of this document – that the services need toevolve in line with social realities and each person’sindividual type of needs. If they cannot cure, theirobjective must be to prevent and be part of an edu-cational process directed towards the personal de-velopment of each individual.

3.1. Improving services at individual level

For a more detailed analysis of a person’s particularsituation and to help plan the most suitable forms ofhelp, counselling needs to be both local and person-alised.

As has been emphasised throughout the precedingchapters, no one response will be right for everyone.Every case is special and must be treated as such.The overriding problem to be taken into considera-tion is that of a return to normal society, a job-relatedactivity, paid or unpaid, training – whether or not itleads to a qualification – and a socially useful job ormore stable (re)integration into employment.

Virtually every case is unique and the contexts – so-cial, economic, cultural or environmental – can beseen as a series of variables affecting the position ofindividuals and the options for their progress anddevelopment. For instance, although global policiesare needed to lay down general guidelines, obviously

it will be far easier for those at grass roots to assessthe needs of the individuals – those who seek help,those who come to the services or those who will notcome but whose needs can be met by occupationalsupport, counselling and guidance services. Thisproximity also provides a better picture of the localsituation and makes meetings easier in that it reducesthe distance to be travelled. It is likely that in any givenarea there will be fewer people to be catered for, sothat they can be reached more readily and will find iteasier to reach the services.

The changes in living conditions and the place ofyoung people and adults in society and the economyimply that not only must existing principles and prac-tices be refined but also the occupational advice andguidance bodies must rethink the services they pro-vide, their methods, objectives and goals. Rather thanreacting they must become pro-active (see 3.1.4.);they must help the individual to become in turn some-one who is active and autonomous (see 3.1.1.); andthey must be able to forestall risks (of unemployment,exclusion, discouragement, etc.) and to the extentpossible act before events occur (see 3.1.4.). Lastly,they need to broaden their horizons (see 3.2.2.), cre-ate cooperative relations with informal networks, so-cial partners, companies, employers, etc., and incor-porate transition – from education to employment orfrom unemployment or from one job to another job –into broader personal and social contexts, offeringaid and support that are both more personal and moreglobal (see 3.1.3.).

The few recommendations made in the chapters thatfollow are those that occur most frequently in thevarious reports (see Bibliography) – both those com-missioned by CEDEFOP and the European Founda-tion for the Improvement of Living and Working Con-ditions, based on the findings of the Eurocounsel re-search-action. They are derived from observationsof initiatives that have faltered or that are not entirelysatisfactory, for which a remedy needs to be foundand for which solutions may even at this point beenvisaged. The points covered are not exhaustiveand are not the only changes that should be made toexisting systems, but they are at least the most press-ing and those whose benefits will become most rap-idly apparent.

3.1.1. Personalised help

Personalising aid helps the practitioner to analysethe situation of a person coming to him in greaterdetail. This also builds up the person’s confidence inthe soundness and effectiveness he can expect fromthe options suggested.

41

In the first few pages of this document, we mentionedthe measures to combat unemployment and exclu-sion as a means of ‘curing’ or at least helping peoplewho have suffered from these ills, some of which aredue to their disadvantaged personal situation at thestart but are also often due to changing economiccircumstances. Being unemployed has both a verypersonal and individual dimension and a highly so-cial dimension. While major measures are needed,personalised help is just as valuable. In offering aquality service, there can be no question of confiningoneself to a standard service.

Ten minutes on the other side of a counter, doinglittle more than give someone a bunch of forms to fillin, is no indication of the interest that a practitionerwill devote to a case and does not afford the satis-faction of taking responsibility or providing supportthat will help to improve a person’s unfortunate situ-ation. Whether the person is a school-leaver who doesnot know where to turn or an adult who has been maderedundant, the most pressing need is for someonewho will listen, think about the situation and analyse indetail all the factors leading up to the situation, as wellas someone who can assess potential with a view toimproving the person’s situation and helping him toemerge from this adverse state of affairs.

One of the first recommendations to emerge fromthe various documents consulted, then, is to person-alise the advice and guidance.

This growing attention to the individual is necessary– and even indispensable – both for the practitionerwho, being the one who knows the individual best,will be better able to choose the most appropriateways of improving his situation, and for the individualhimself as, in feeling that he has someone to talk to,he will acquire more confidence and may even beencouraged to do as much as he can to improve hisown situation (3.1.2.), knowing that someone is tak-ing care of him, is taking his case into considerationand is trying to help him.

When these transition periods have to be faced, theservices and action programmes set up by major in-stitutions such as schools – in the case of youngpeople – or national employment centres – in the caseof adults – are not challenged. They meet nationalneeds and because of this are firmly legitimised, inthat they represent a measure of social cohesion.They are necessary – but perhaps not always suffi-cient.

This listening and personalised help can be success-fully provided only in the confined framework of local

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42

structures, which obviously reflect the major nationaland European directives but may also act and reactaccording to the immediate local context and the moreintimate knowledge of the person needing help. Inaddition, it is not just a matter of determining the in-tellectual or vocational potential of an individual sothat he can achieve permanent and satisfying(re)integration; careful thought should also be devotedto his experience outside work and his personaltastes, in order to arrive at a clear definition of hiswishes and experience as well as the obstacles thatmay have to be overcome.

This more active personalisation helps above all togain the confidence of the individual, making him feelthat the services set up will take his needs into ac-count and will make the maximum effort to find anappropriate solution for his case and his present situ-ation. It also helps to define all a person’s character-istics, his past, his present, his origins and his char-acter (so that he can be viewed in his social setting),his achievements and his shortcomings (especiallyeducational and training), his motivations, prospectsand plans for the future. Obviously all this will be thestarting point for any efforts to provide help and ad-vice. It is through knowing who a person is that onecan envisage what he might become.

The concept underlying the Tallaght Partnership inIreland (Box 7) is of great interest in this respect. Itdefines three degrees of intervention, and the resultsachieved seem to justify the value of ‘flexible’ meth-ods that vary according to the personality and char-acteristics of the users.

Box 7

The guidance service in the Tallaght Centre in Dublin

The philosophy of this guidance scheme is based ona concept of self-determination. The guidance is non-directive and client-focused, the aim being to meetthe individual’s needs. Besides the group discussions,one-to-one meetings between the participant and thecounsellor are preferred.

Given that the guidance is client-focused, its contentvaries from one person to another.

With some people, all that is needed is to providegood quality information to help them identify theopportunities for training and learning.

Others need to receive far more advice and counsel-ling in order to discover what suits them best and todefine their own job aspirations.

A third guidance method is for people lacking the self-confidence to retrain or to opt to go back to their stud-ies, or who question the value of retraining. In suchcases, what are needed are guidance, counsellingand more personal support.

The fact that the service can adapt to the individualneeds of participants is obviously one of the strengthsof this initiative. This flexibility of response to the de-mands of users has already led to very positive re-sults.

Four months after the end of the guidance scheme,more than half of the participants had a job, almost aquarter were attending adult education courses orcontinuing training or were taking part in other job pro-grammes, and fewer than a fifth were still unemployed.

Sources: Hurley, 1994.

Special facilities have already been launched to in-crease the attention devoted to users. In 1995 theOECD was considering setting up a system underwhich at least one hour’s individual counselling amonth should be offered to every unemployed per-son (European Foundation for the Improvement ofLiving and Working Conditions – Watt, 1997). Theidea was agreeable and would obviously be benefi-cial if only it were achievable – which is not the case,as the services now operate11 . It is still encouraging,however, and gives hope that efforts may in fact bemade along these lines to ensure that everyone re-ceives more attention.

This is also the criterion for the PIBE (personalisedjobseeking plan) in Spain. The personalised jobseekingplan is based on a ‘jobseeker’s diary’ (see Box 8), tobe compiled in the course of efforts to find a job. Thishelps the adviser to monitor the individual’s progressand provide appropriate help. One drawback of thisservice pointed out is that from the start it assumesthat:

‘only a certain number of registered unem-ployed really try to find a job or have the abil-ity to achieve this. They are the ones, then,who merit particular attention’ (Hurley, 1994,p. 121).

It is apparent here that there is a kind of selectionwhich will inevitably work to the disadvantage of thosewho, despite everything, need special help, even ifthis does not point in the direction of lasting integra-tion in the working world.

11 The German public services and transport workers’ union (ÖTV) has cal-culated that in future, advisers working for the national employment officewill be able to devote an average of only three minutes to each client (Watt,1997, p.44).

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Besides the need to establish personalised help at alocal level – i.e. closer to the individual – it is alsovital, in the framework of measures designed to com-bat exclusion, not to confine support, counselling andguidance services to the transition period alone,whether this occurs immediately on leaving the edu-cational system or at a later stage (see 3.1.3). Whatis also needed is to make sure that everyone canbenefit from the services provided, and above all tohelp a person to discover for himself the path thatsuits him best.

3.1.2. The activation factor

The main role of services must be to provide a sortof mentoring activity. The need is to help the indi-vidual develop and apply strategies to improve hissituation.

Although the vocational support, counselling and guid-ance services have the tools they need to provide thebest possible information to the individual on ways ofimproving himself personally and vocationally, and al-though they have a dynamic role to perform in theirrelations with people under threat of redundancy, it isimportant for the stress to be placed on active citizen-ship and that their advice be regarded as directedabove all to ‘encouraging’ the individual to make hisown choices and take control of his own life.

The various consolidated documents and reportsconsulted (see Bibliography) show that one of theissues that needs to be stressed in the recommen-dations is helping the individual improve his lot(through his competences, qualifications, quality oflife, etc.), but more by mobilising his own resourcesand ability to choose than by taking over completeresponsibility for him (where necessary this can bedone by the social security agencies). It is clear thatthe occupational support, counselling and guidanceservices are expected to set up the work of activa-tion, encouragement to act and the mobilisation ofthe individual; and in no circumstances must they beor become managers of people’s lives.

It is evident that many schemes have already beenlaunched to persuade people to take the initiative inoperations designed to improve the way they live.For example, this is the case of the jobseeker’s diaryin Barcelona (Box 8), a scheme set up by INEM, thenational employment institute, through the PIBE –personalised jobseeking plan.

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Box 8

The jobseeke r’s diary

After an individual interview, the unemployed personis asked to keep a detailed record, to be filled in likea diary. This is subsequently used to explain, inform,motivate and guide the user on his own abilities,jobseeking techniques, etc.

This jobseeker’s diary means that an individual hasto make a special effort to set out logically, in writing,his abilities and methods of looking for a job, underthe constant supervision of specialists from the agen-cies who are specifically assigned to this task.

He must also go to the agency once a month to dis-cuss his progress. If he is rejected by an employer –even though his background fits in with what isneeded – he is required to give the reasons for rejec-tion, so that the appropriate services can take stepsto remedy the situation and improve the way hepresents himself and puts over his good points, inorder to increase his chances of success when thenext opportunity arises.

Sources: Hurley, 1994.

There is, however, one reservation that should beexpressed: it is notable that the services in questionachieve far better results when the measures set upare not in any way compulsory. Even so, an individualwho has totally lost confidence (see the ‘invisible’group of the marginalised needing reintegration)needs to be remotivated, and it is likely that the com-petent departments need to some extent to introducean almost compulsory procedure to do this (see3.1.4.). The distinction is sometimes retained.

This positive approach, one that needs to be adoptedor improved by the vocational advice and guidanceservices and practitioners in an effort to activate theindividual, must in practice take two directions:

l the first is individual, and focuses directly on theperson with needs to be met by these services.The objective to be achieved, the measure to beset up, must not (except in extreme cases) con-sist of taking over responsibility for the individualcompletely; on the contrary, it must provide en-couragement to act, to motivate a person to be-come (return to being) an independent citizencapable of constructing his own life and workplans, pursuing goals that he has set himself. Theaim is to do so by taking an active part in his inte-gration on the labour market or his reintegration

in a social activity. The particular goal for the ad-visory service is to help the individual to discover,develop and apply strategies in order actively todeal with his situation, to include seeking local jobcreation and working opportunities in the unoffi-cial economy. Here the ploy is to persuade theindividual and influence his values rather than toimpose an obligation of special measures. Thisavoids him being systematically treated like a ‘vic-tim’ of the system.

l the second direction is far more collective andmore directly associated with the way such advi-sory structures operate. To make the activationand self-mobilisation of an individual possible, theoccupational support, counselling and guidanceservices must first have set up adequate liaisonwith the local community so that they can sug-gest certain bodies, companies, associations, etc.which might help the individual to acquire a socialand/or occupational ‘usefulness’, activate his skillsand take advantage of any opportunities to over-come his problems (this factor will be discussedmore specifically in 3.2.2.).

On this subject of activation, certain reports also dis-cuss the participation of clients, at the request of theaid bodies, in providing advice to their peers. Herethe process comes full circle: it is admirable whenindividuals become active citizens and when the sup-port and advice services adopt the initiative in mobi-lising the users: even though the client takes advan-tage of the support and advice, he also becomes atrainer and therefore a provider of help to others.

This is the case with the Maribo (Denmark) autono-mous advisory group, Initiativgruppen (Hurley, 1994).It consists of unemployed people who have beengiven free access to a room in the job centre in thetown. The Eurocounsel report published by the Eu-ropean Foundation for the Improvement of Living andWorking Conditions describes how participants meetregularly to help each other, for example in finding ajob and in using the services of a guidance counsel-lor where necessary to cover specific subjects (legalmatters, etc.). Apart from the room made availableto them, they can also use some of the equipment(telephone, photocopier, etc.). They offer mutual ad-vice and counsel in the light of each one’s experi-ence. It appears that this activation of participantsadds to their self-respect, builds up their confidence,including confidence in their lives in general, andhelps them to perform a genuinely active role in tak-ing responsibility for their own lives and even thoseof their peers.

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In the same way, the Self-Development CounsellingGroup of North Mayo in Ireland (McCarthy, 1994) hasas its basic precept the non-duality of unemploymentand employment. The unemployed and long-termunemployed are regarded as themselves being a ‘re-source’. The group’s activities consist of channellingthese resources towards cohesive social interven-tion. The group also consists of unemployed peoplebeing trained to teach the skills needed by other un-employed people, in other words to give mutual help.The transition from membership of the client groupto the support group is fairly rapid. The aim is to en-able all the members to deploy their own resourcesin participating in change and thereby achieve theirpotential for intervention in the processes of socialexclusion.

A similar experiment has also been conducted inThuringen in Germany (ALI programme), in whichconsiderable encouragement is given for self-advice.Among the services made available are a specialistlibrary on labour law, the display of job vacancies,discussion groups on trends in industry and employ-ment, etc. It seems that this way of making informa-tion available encourages individuals to take theirfuture in their own hands.

This wide dissemination of information has undoubt-edly reached its maximum in the United Kingdom,with the STEPAhead in Aberdeen: this is very like ashop that provides – or in this case sells – adviceand guidance, as well as a whole range of educa-tional material, books and tapes, with which anyonecan learn on his own, encouraging greater aware-ness of the potential benefits of training and studies.

Such non-directive guidance, which still leaves scopefor greater self-determination, can exist side-by-sidewith an active organisation of occupational support,counselling and guidance services which, while look-ing ahead on individuals’ behalf, essentially aims toforestall the problems that might arise in the absenceof proper advice or services (3.2.4.).

Throughout this section it is in fact apparent that therole of occupational counselling and guidance serv-ices is to help the individual find his bearings andimprove his conditions of life and work, but at thesame time it is not necessarily its role – far from it –to assume responsibility for that individual. More andmore, such services are regarded as being able topromote active employment measures and less andless as part of the social protection infrastructure(where the task is more to take over the financial,psychological and other aspects). It seems, then, thatwhat is valued in these services and what is recom-

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mended for them is now far more their activity of life-long mentoring.

3.1.3. The overall prospect: from one-offsupport to life plans

The aid and support work of counselling servicesshould not be confined to occasional periods of oc-cupational transition. The situation should be re-garded in terms of one’s whole life, taking all the otheraspects of a person’s life at and outside work intoaccount as well.

Giving personalised help to an individual with a par-ticular problem means that the problem can be moreaccurately identified, an inventory made of the per-son’s achievements and potential and above all aclear idea formed of the disadvantage with which hehas to cope and the most appropriate solution found(see 3.1.1.).

The process of guiding him and encouraging him tomove forward through his own efforts to solve hisproblem (see 3.1.2.) may build up greater self-confi-dence and speed up his return to the working worldand society.

One-off help, such as the help marshalled in the tran-sition periods of an individual’s life, often provides nomore than a respite and in no way signifies total re-covery or a better quality of life in the long term, eventhough this is one of the goals of the occupationalsupport, counselling and guidance services.

Furthermore, the trend towards flexibility in employ-ment makes it all too evident that an individual mayhave to face many transitions in his working life. Heshould be strongly recommended to take advantageof help and advice not just in reaction to a difficultybut of a preventive nature, spread out throughout hisworking life and even outside work.

Along the same lines, many case studies show thatsteps have already been taken in this direction.They also highlight the value of focusing sustainedattention on the individual’s environment, dealingwith the general context of his life and achieve-ments, for example by including psychologicalneeds. This is shown by the example of the Mafaldacentre (Box 9).

Box 9

Advice on every aspect of daily life:the example of the Mafalda centre

The Mafalda centre is a non-profit-making companyin Graz in Austria whose primary mission is to helpgirls and young women to enter the labour marketmore easily, but it also offers a set of advice and moregeneral services. These include:

l ‘occupational’ advice (vocational guidance and ca-reer planning),

l ‘psychological/social’ advice (family problems, fi-nancial, legal and housing problems, etc.),

l ‘medical’ advice (contraception, sexual problems,etc.).Facilities for leisure activities are also offered.

The centre starts with the idea that people who haveexperienced long periods of unemployment oftenhave complex and related problems. It is only logicalthat the centre should not confine itself to vocationalcounselling but should also include help with psycho-logical, social and legal matters, etc.

The aim is to develop a comprehensive advisory serv-ice.


Two separate types of transition have been discussed(section 2):

l the transition faced by young people emergingfrom the educational system,

l the transition faced by adults following a period ofunemployment or in a move from one job to an-other.

One observation is evident: the service offered is of-ten limited to a very specific situation or condition.The transition from education to employment, forexample, is essentially covered by the school andvocational guidance departments within the educa-tional system itself.

This raises certain problems since, in many cases,the role of the guidance services, as we are remindedby the French report on the northern districts of Mar-seilles (CIBC, 1996), is often linked with the task ofperformance evaluation and sanction.

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The Luxembourg report (Fandel and Pauwels, 1994)also clearly argues that this is a negative connota-tion of the services concerned, which treat this pe-riod in the lives of young people as a priority – oreven perhaps as the only period – with less concernfor the periods that follow. In Luxembourg the ninthyear of school education seems to be the most cru-cial in terms of the pupil’s future, and most of thecounselling services are concentrated in this one year.

It is time to think about providing help and advicebefore this critical year, as well as after. This is aspecial recommendation in urgent need of consid-eration. From all the reports it is clearly apparent thatemployment and training should no longer be viewedas separate from other aspects of life but as an inte-gral part of it. For instance, it is important to think interms of life as a whole; although it is vital to startproviding advice and guidance before the transitionbetween school and employment, it is just as vital tocontinue after a person enters the labour market.

Besides thinking in terms of life as a whole, whichbrings us to the concept of lifelong training, we mustconsider the idea that advice and vocational guidancemake sense only if the individual’s broader needs aretaken into account and strategies developed, takingthe holistic approach to each person’s problems. Thedifficult case of the homeless and other marginalisedpeople who need reintegration is the most obviousexample, but another is the target group of apparentlyproblem-free individuals who find it hard to invest inthemselves or to develop in their personal and work-ing lives because their work is not what they hoped itwould be or what they feel they are capable of.

The appropriate step, therefore, is one that on thewhole has already been taken: not to confine the workof counselling to the period of transition from educa-tion to employment, but to extend the scope of sup-port and advisory services and to consider every oc-casion when an adult is faced with transition options.

Transitions may be of at least two kinds: from unem-ployment to employment and from one job to another(following retraining for a different job, or training thatmight lead to advancement, etc.). With adults, the tran-sition may also entail paving the way from a paid jobto an unpaid job-related activity (see the question ofvoluntary work for early retirees, for example).

The problems that an individual has to face maysometimes be greater than might originally be as-sumed. The case study on the VUS project in Den-mark and the two weeks’ general education courseoffered to workers have revealed that many of them,

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despite being established in society and the workingworld, were in fact incapable of filling in even simpleforms because of reading difficulties. It is obviousthat, given the rapid pace of technological change,such people run the risk of finding themselves in dif-ficulties with which they would be hard put to it tocope unless they receive additional training.

Taking a more global approach, it may first be nec-essary to disperse the places where advice is pro-vided (see 3.1.4.). The services responsible for giv-ing advice should be set up in several very differentlocations depending on the size of a town, its maineconomic activity and its particular social policy. Be-sides the national employment centres to which anyindividual can go, social support offices, town halls,works councils, sometimes the unions, or neighbour-hood committees or bodies, may provide some ofthe services to which there is a collective or individualentitlement.

These transitions and the help to be given by thecounselling services must be seen against the back-ground of an individual’s personal characteristics, theplace where he lives and his deep-seated motivations.A service offering occasional support would then farmore obviously become one that concerns itself withindividuals, helping them to establish a life plan, tak-ing into account all the dimensions and parametersof their personal, social and working lives.

For instance, this model of operation in what we havecalled the global perspective must contribute to mak-ing such counselling services the core element in thelifelong support of an individual, the aim being to ana-lyse his situation and determine the different routesthat will lead him – or bring him back – to a socialrole or paid or job-related activity, combining in a sin-gle structure and a single service the personal, eco-nomic, social, cultural and education and trainingaspects.

3.1.4. Towards prevention

Counselling should be more widespread and an in-tegral part of everyday life. It should be provided be-fore the event and also contribute before unemploy-ment or exclusion becomes established.

Helping an individual to regain confidence, becomeindependent and construct life plans calls for activeorganisation on the part of the counselling services.This is a question raised both in the two CEDEFOPsynthesis reports (the need for vocational counsel-ling among different target groups of young peopleunder 28 years of age in the European Community,

Chisholm, 1994; Social Occupational Integration atLocal Level, Stathopoulos, 1997) and in the Euro-pean Foundation for the Improvement of Living andWorking Conditions Eurocounsel report – (Portfolioof case studies – Examples of innovatory vocationalcounselling practices, Hurley, 1994; The role of guid-ance and counselling for adults on a changing la-bour market, Watt, 1997). The arrangements mustbe made in favour of both the users and the servicesthemselves. It must be made possible for a greaterproportion of the population to be active, to engagein a significant form of activity, whatever that mightbe. The means of preserving what one has achievedmust also be provided.

This activation should as an optimum, for instance,be able to avert the risks of unemployment and ex-clusion and come into play before the problems havebecome too firmly established. This recommenda-tion, whose aim is to promote preventive counsel-ling, would entail the setting up of various measuresalong several different lines.

A preliminary observation should be made: seen withthe eyes of the youngest people, guidance on com-pletion of schooling is not enough. Young people musthave far more substantial channels of consultation.Without going into details here of the shortage of re-sources and shortcomings in the training of advicepractitioners (see 3.2.4.), from a review of the situa-tions in various European Union countries it seemsthat the advice offered is not always effective or evenadequate.

The Irish report cited by Chisholm (1994) states that‘vocational guidance is rare and dispersed [...] manyyoung people have not received guidance before leav-ing school’.

In Portugal, the guidance and psychological coun-selling services are used by two thirds of pupils, butonly during the final year of compulsory schooling.These services have been operating since 1983 butdo not yet exist in all schools. Furthermore, they areavailable only on request.

In countries such as Denmark where personal, schooland vocational guidance is practically a school sub-ject, two fifths of young people in the 15 to 24 yearold age group do not feel that they have receivedsuch guidance.

The recommendation to be put forward, then, is thatthe concept and practice of advice centres be thoughtthrough afresh. Pro-active and preventive organisa-tion means coming within the reach of actual or po-

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33.1 tential users and being positioned well before – andwell after - the periods of transition.

One of the first points noted, even though at first sightit seems to have little impact on the quality of serviceprovided, relates to the premises of support and ad-vice services. CEDEFOP’s consolidated report on theneed for vocational counselling among different tar-get groups of young people under 28 years of age inthe European Community (Chisholm, 1994), as wellas the report by the European Foundation (The roleof guidance and counselling for adults on a labourmarket in transition, Eurocounsel Final Report, Watt,1997), consider that it would be appropriate for themto be ‘attractive’. An official environment is a deter-rent, and what is needed is a friendly area whereadvice can be offered in a pleasant setting.

On the question of premises, another need wouldbe to increase their number and locations. It may atfirst sight seem a little trivial to be concerned withpremises and how they are fitted out and decoratedwhen the issue is to combat unemployment and ex-clusion, but in practice this concern is not a neutralfactor or one without effects. Spatial expansion alsomeans developing a strategy in order to reach asmany individuals and groups as possible and involvethem in occupational support, counselling and guid-ance services more actively and also in a less offi-cial manner. There must be a voluntary strategy ofintegrating guidance services into the community anddaily life.

Among the guidance, apprenticeship and training‘shops’ created in the United Kingdom and financedby the TECs (local Training and Enterprise Coun-cils in England and Wales) and LECs (local unitsfor technical training, Scotland) (Howieson et al.,1994), the experience of STEPAhead (Hurley, 1994),virtually a shop in the town centre, with the sameopening hours as the shops around it, is an inter-esting example. Also of note in Erfurt in Germany(Hurley, 1994) is an original neighbourhood serv-ice: the traditional meeting place is used, in this casethe local café. Without making them too ordinary,the aim is for such services not to becompartmentalised with, and so inevitably seen asbeing like, separate institutions such as school foryoungsters and job centres for adults.

In the framework of a dynamic and preventive or-ganisation, in order to make the people who may staffsuch structures less formal and less managerial, theservices provided should be ‘accessorised’: makingguides available for consultation by everyone (seethe guide published by the advice centre in Sarrebruck



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in Germany for example), as well as yearbooks, post-ers, etc. It is valuable to make use of today’s mediaadvances, even at times the opportunities providedby the Internet, for example. It should be noted, how-ever, that this use of relatively sophisticated resourceshas its drawbacks: whatever the financial support thestructures may enjoy, it is unlikely that they will all beequally well equipped with hardware and software.There is a risk of somewhat widening the gap be-tween regions, towns, neighbourhoods and servicesthat are better or less well endowed, and thereforebetween individuals who may or may not be able touse services of varying standards of performance.

Besides the particular premises and resources to beprovided locally, the recommendation of having anactive and preventive organisation, as part of morepractical involvement of such services in everydaylife, may also imply – may above all imply – reachingout to individuals and groups.

‘Reaching out’ is a portmanteau concept. It implies ameasure of dynamism, of spatial mobility, leadingperhaps to going out to those people who do not nor-mally make use of counselling services. It may meanflexibility in the timing of help, i.e. anticipating eventsand conducting preventive action to help those at riskof unemployment or of encountering particular prob-lems which might be dealt with the help of counsel-ling and guidance services.

Ungdomsvejledningen in Denmark (Box 10) is an in-teresting example of an ‘pro-active’ and ‘preventive’organisation of the provision of advice.

Box 10

Towards ‘dynamic’ advice and canvassing -the approach adopted by Ungdomsvejledningen

Ungdomsvejledningen is a decentralised advice pro-gramme based in Holbæk and funded by the localauthorities. It caters specifically for young people upto the age of 19 and/or during the two-year periodafter they leave school.

These are contacted at least twice a year, even ifthey have moved away from the area.

As an advice programme, Ungdomsvejledningenmakes a considerable effort to ensure that the serv-ice it provides reaches the whole of the target popu-lation.

The young people, especially those at more directrisk of unemployment, are contacted personally by

letter or telephone. Ungdomsvejledningen has meet-ing places in the town centre that are easy to reach,but it also visits young people in their own homes.

A vocational education programme is also provided inschools, offering comprehensive information on theoptions for further education, training and employment.If despite this a young person fails to find work, he isimmediately placed on an intensive introductory andadvice programme (intro-&vejledningskursus).


In the same way, social workers at the advice serv-ice in the administrative district of Saarlouis in Ger-many (Hurley, 1994) visit jobless people in theirhomes if they fail to respond to an invitation to comeinto the service. It obtains the addresses and par-ticulars of the unemployed through the social secu-rity agency or the job centre. The social worker reach-ing out to the unemployed person seeks to obtain asmuch information as possible on the school he hasattended, what work training or experience he mayhave acquired, etc. The questionnaire compiled as aresult is used in providing advice by ‘matching upprojects’, so that a choice can be make of the type ofprogramme to which an individual may be guided. Along-term integration plan is then produced, cover-ing different types of programmes that will enable theindividual to set his own goals from what is now aprecise starting point.

An active and preventive organisation also impliesthat the support, counselling and guidance servicessee themselves as part of an evolving process. Italso means that contacts must be made and pur-sued with other local partners. There is a good dealof work to be done in establishing, promoting andstrengthening networks in order to provide a fullerrange of services to users (see 3.2.2.).

These various points highlight how great a contribu-tion occupational support, counselling and guidanceservices can make to individuals and groups in theirapproach. They also show how necessary it still is todevelop certain practices, improve certain servicesand develop certain types of service. It should be amatter of priority to provide support at grass roots,but a clear statement should be made at Europeanlevel on the directions to be taken, and fresh thoughtshould be given to the theories, practices and goalsunderlying the operation of such services.

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3.2. Reviewing the concept and organisationof services at European, national andlocal level

Although the target groups and the services offeredvary greatly from one country to another and evenfrom one region or town to another, outline directivesshould be laid down, which can then be adapted ineach place to the particular context.

In practice the preferred option should be the localapproach, gearing actions to the specific needs ofan individual, district or group and so that the role ofthe operators in a specific area can be defined. Atthe same time, however, it is vital to look at the sub-ject from the global perspective in order to state themain priorities for policies on combating unemploy-ment and the ensuing risks of exclusion.

In all the countries that make up Europe, central gov-ernment must take the lead in formulating these so-cial policies, with the regional and municipal authori-ties and local operators being those that directly ad-minister the policies. Central Government will continueto define the rules of the game and retain overall re-sponsibility as the guarantor of national solidarity.

In general, there must be a new concept of counsel-ling practices. Economic changes imply not only theimprovement of existing principles and practices, butalso a global rethinking of the place to be occupiedby these various services today, the methods theyshould be developing, the aims and goals to beachieved. Important principles need to be confirmedor redefined. It is of value if this can first be set up ata global level - European and national – and that aclear-cut, concise theory be stated, which could betaken as a starting point for practices, which may beadapted at the regional and local levels.

In these major trends, there should in particular be areview of the position and the relations of the occu-pational support, counselling and guidance serviceswith the major institutions (school, etc.), the localsocial partners, businesses and the various non-gov-ernmental bodies, for example (see 3.2.2.).

Lastly, while the practices of counselling and guid-ance services should be modified, the quality of whatthey offer improved and their fields of competencebroadened, it is also inevitable that serious consid-eration be given to the training of advice practition-ers and other social workers operating in such serv-ices (3.2.4.).

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3.2.1. A specific policy at the European andnational levels

A declaration of principle setting out the priorities andthe main courses of action at European and nationallevels needs to be established, with minimum stand-ards of guarantee in order to harmonise the practiceof counselling within the European Union.

It has been explicitly established that vocational ad-vice and guidance can make active employmentmeasures more effective, and that they are majorfactors in the struggle against unemployment andeconomic and social exclusion.

Future trends on the labour market indicating greaterflexibility and demand for an ever higher level of skillsconfirm the need to provide for counselling servicesthroughout life, so that people can cope better withthe transition between school and employment andwith periods of unemployment.

To avoid unemployment, thought should be given tonew forms of career guidance during working life.Just as there should be lifelong learning, counsellingservices throughout life are also needed to help peo-ple deal with the complexities of the working worldand training.

The political decision-makers must have the requi-site tools to encourage the setting up of better qualityservices and their adaptation to the needs and de-mand of individuals.

The White Paper on ‘Growth, competitiveness, em-ployment’ (1993) already contains detailed propos-als designed to make a further impact on the labourmarket, including objectives of basic competences,plans for guaranteed employment for young people,better information for employees, etc. The paper hasbeen reinforced by other programmes (see theMaastricht Treaty social chapter). In the context of amore closely integrated Europe and single market,not only the jobs markets but also occupational pro-files and activities must be defined at a more globallevel.

The European Foundation for the Improvement ofLiving and Working Conditions’ Eurocounsel consoli-dated report (Watt, 1997) stresses the vital need fora declaration of principle at European level settingout these various prospects and establishing the ad-visory service as an independent measure, a funda-mental component of other measures and a promoterof social cohesion, facilitating reintegration on thelabour market and in society and creating the link

between economic development and social devel-opment.

There are good arguments for this view of advice asa measure independent of other measures. Recog-nition of its independent status should encouragesuch services to develop in the direction of providingglobal guidance for their clients (in other words, ex-tending beyond the close, confined framework ofjobseeking and/or training). In addition, by treatingadvice as separate from other measures, it shouldbe easier to measure its effects and evaluate its ef-fectiveness more accurately.

According to the Eurocounsel report (Watt, 1997), itis important that evaluation and coordination of ad-vice and guidance policies be under the responsibil-ity of experienced external agencies. The social part-ners, European employers’ associations and the tradeunions should also be involved.

Another vital objective that should be included in aEuropean-level declaration of principle is a stipula-tion of the minimum guarantees that will ensure thateveryone has access to the services, and what ismore to effective services.

This declaration of principle, setting out the minimumstandards, must also be established at national level.Each region should then be in a position to prepare astrategic plan for the provision of advice, which shouldbe part of the overall national strategic frameworkbesides being developed at local level, in liaison withthe various economic and social partners (this alreadyexists, for example, in the United Kingdom in the formof ‘Investors in People’ – standards of quality for thedevelopment of human resources within theworkplace (Howieson et al., 1994)).

Lastly, at the national, regional and local levels thereis a need to conduct regular reviews. This meanslisting the existing services – public and private,whether in the form of partnerships or non-govern-mental organisations, profit-making or non-profitmaking – and determining how they operate and theirstrengths and weaknesses, so that the advice mar-ket in the territory concerned can be understood alittle better and the measurement and evaluation pro-cedures improved (see annex).

This also means compiling information on the localmarket, the options, opportunities and advantages,etc. The work would have to be both statistical andqualitative from this viewpoint, encouraging the sup-port, counselling and guidance services to rely moreclosely on their local partners.

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3.2.2. The multidisciplinary and holistic approach

Not only must advice be provided to individuals, butthe range of services should also be extended andclients should be directed towards other networks,where appropriate.

Obviously a structure that aims to offer global guid-ance to individuals must establish a number of linkswith widely different agencies, associations, commit-tees and private persons. This is true even when thetransition is between education and employment orbetween unemployment and work, but it is also true,on a broader scale, when the issue is the lifelongcounselling of the individual on problems as variedas those relating to his working status as well as hissocial and personal status.

Such links have already been established at Euro-pean level between several sectors; they need to beimproved and intensified at national and local levelswith the economic, social and educational sectors,among others.

The main objective of such links is to broaden therange of opportunities and information that can beconveyed, increasing the likelihood of users makingbetter progress from one service to another andachieving a positive result.

The creation of links and the resulting multi-disciplinarity must first be established in the schools,creating preventive action and providing young peo-ple with an adequate body of knowledge for them tomake an informed choice of what is on offer. It maybe necessary for the occupational support, counsel-ling and guidance services to be in contact with ayoungster’s personal networks (parents, teachers).It is even more vital that these services should haveestablished links, with local businesses, for exam-ple, so that a young person can become familiar withthe working world and acquire his first experience ofwork, which will help him make a start and make abetter choice of the route in which he is interested.

It is on the local labour market and in workplacesclose at hand that support, counselling and guidanceservices must here and now create the basis for closecontact, so that they can create links between thoseoffering their labour and those needing that labour –the origin of their role. Many users have reported aglaring lack of information on this local labour mar-ket among advisory services. A partnership betweenlocal enterprises and counselling and guidance serv-ices would help to create or improve certain meas-ures, for example by offering work placement oppor-

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tunities, considering applications from the long-termunemployed or organising open days to familiarisepeople with a company and the work it does.

In the framework of preventive measures and theenlargement of the occupational support, counsel-ling and guidance services, it is also valuable for linksto be established with the trade unions. The lattercould take a greater part in the provision of advice,for example strengthening contacts with the advicepractitioners on users’ rights, new training opportu-nities and ways of preventing unemployment.

An interesting scheme has been conducted in Den-mark, at Fakse (Box 5), where local unions havetaken deliberate steps to add to the advisory respon-sibilities of delegates from local workshops, who thenserve as catalysts in encouraging their colleagues totake a training course.

This partnership strategy is most advanced in Den-mark. A single approach involves advisers, employ-ers, unions and local economic development plan-ners, government and non-governmental agencies.The partnership ranges from the simple transfer ofinformation from one body to another to a more ad-vanced strategy of coordination or cross-linking, shar-ing not only information but particular skills and cre-ating an integrated, multidisciplinary service.

The small agencies are usually more wary of thisprocess, fearing a loss of independence and of com-ing under the financial control of the larger structureswith which they would have to ally themselves, asrecounted in CEDEFOP’s consolidated report onSocial and Occupational Integration at Local Level(Stathopoulos, 1997). Nevertheless, to an increas-ing degree the services are recognising the positiveimpact of this type of strategy, for example by puttingthe educational system in contact with other institu-tions in the same town. A measure of confidence mustfirst be established to promote this synergy of theactions to be developed.

Clearly at local level – at least – the support, coun-selling and guidance services must be able to informindividuals about the particular bodies, associationsor structures that can be of some help or value tothem.

In this respect, it is not enough to create networkswith the official institutions; it is also necessary toexamine the usefulness and contribution of informalstructures, non-governmental organisations or neigh-bourhood councils, for example.

This is in fact what has already been done at locallevel in Belgium and in Greece (Elefsina andThessaloniki), as described in the CEDEFOP con-solidated report (Social and Occupational Integrationat Local Level, Stathopoulos, 1997), which mentionseffective and efficient coordination mechanisms.

While the advice to be given primarily concerns theindividual or groups in difficulties, it may also be di-rected to employers or other local bodies. A casestudy in Austria on Arbeitsassistenz, assistance withwork, as part of the Pro Mente Infirmis (PMI) workgroup, furnishes an example (Box 11).

Box 11

The activities and services offered atArbeitsassistenz

Arbeitsassistenz is a centre established by Pro MenteInfirmis, an association for mental and social health.Its main activity is the reintegration into society ofpeople suffering from psychological problems. Inaddition to psycho-social advice centres and residen-tial communities for the mentally ill, it administers avocational training centre.

Arbeitsassistenz is jointly financed by the labourmarket authority, the provincial bureau for the disa-bled and the regional authorities.

Special links promote access to the services. The liai-son is essentially through the jobs centre rehabilita-tion services or the provincial bureau for the disabled.As a result of the good cooperation with these depart-ments, users hear about the existence of Arbeitsas-sistenz and are sent to the centre for help and advice.Certain other users are sent to Arbeitsassistenz byother branches of Pro Mente Infirmis, or they may dis-cover the centre through acquaintances or friends.The centre makes considerable efforts in public rela-tions; its services are targeted both to its users (withindividual counselling sessions, etc.) and to employ-ers (educational campaigns, formulating objectives,etc.). Arbeitsassistenz aims to become a direct part-ner in the user/employer/social environment triangle,attempting to offer professional help and arrive at so-lutions that benefit all the parties concerned.

There are several challenges, therefore. The objectis to provide help simultaneously to:

l employees with psychological/social problemswho risk losing their jobs;

l unemployed people with psychological/socialproblems who are trying to return to the labour l

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l unemployed people with psychological/socialproblems who are trying to return to the laburmarket;

l employers, management and works committeesthat have to deal with these people’s mental prob-lems and the problems to which they give rise inthe workplace.

Thus, here the twofold aim is to improve the chancesof access to jobs for its clients by establishing con-tacts with companies and to arouse awarenessamong employers, company principals, managementand personnel managers, with a view to more open-minded attitudes and closer integration – with dueregard to the interests of the employer, the client andthe social and working environment.


It is recognised that through creating links at severallevels, more sophisticated or at least better organ-ised access can be obtained to information and bet-ter quality and more extensive services. All the par-ties involved in the support, advice and guidance, i.e.the individual as well as the employer and society ingeneral, are taken into consideration.

Lastly, apart from creating links and collaboration withlocal partners, it is obvious that occupational sup-port, counselling and guidance services cannot dowithout structured support from and contact with theofficial agencies: the social support bodies, nationalemployment centres, etc.

Ungdomsvejledningen in Denmark, as we have seen(Box 10), is able to promote an active system of or-ganisation that looks beyond individual needs be-cause it is supported and informed by the official bod-ies helping groups at risk towards whom the workcould be directed. For instance, in the framework ofUngdomsvejledningen, there is a system of transferby the young people’s training and education estab-lishments in the vicinity, which give them informationon the identity of young people who drop out of edu-cation or training courses. Through this sourceUngdomsvejledningen can then make contact withthe youngsters in an effort to remotivate them andpersuade them to return to training. In the same way,Ungdomsvejledningen is in contact with the socialsecurity services, which withhold benefits if a personrefuses to take part in a course. Parents, officialsand the local authorities are also extensively involved,attending meetings to coordinate the advisory activi-ties and to influence local policies, in particular byspecial orientation courses.

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The Trinijove foundation in Spain (Hurley, 1994), anon-government association established in a disad-vantaged district in Barcelona, also makes use of allthe available resources. These come from variousbodies and authorities such as INEM, the regionalgovernment, local communities, etc., with which co-operation agreements have been signed. Contactshave also been made with the Basque Country andin France.

The CILOs – local employment initiative centres – inPiedmont in Italy, are another example of the crea-tion of links among several sectors and partners help-ing to improve the quality and volume of services pro-vided. Such links are, moreover, the basis of the policyof CILOs. As Hurley (1994) reports, they act as coor-dinators of all the resources that may be brought tobear for the unemployed in the region. The labourmarket observatory is the link between the CILOsand the region. It organises the network, distributestraining, continually seeks to improve the system,helps the CILOs and launches research and enquir-ies for the network as a whole.

The lesson to be learned is that, to combat unem-ployment and help people at risk of becoming unem-ployed, one must seek the collaboration of all theresources existing locally, especially those with re-sponsibilities other than those of the occupationalsupport, counselling and guidance services. Anumber of organisations can intervene effectively onvarious grounds, and this may give rise to joint plan-ning by the various bodies.

In addition to the necessary contacts with educationand employment bodies, institutions such as the po-lice or clergy can also have a positive impact in coun-teracting unemployment and exclusion, as describedfor example by the Swedish Kalmar report (CEDEFOP,1997, quoted by Stathopoulos, 1997).

Similarly, it is important for there to be liaison betweenthe educational sector and the working world, localpartners, associations and neighbourhood councilsamong others. Links and cooperation are inevitablebetween those working in the field of social protectionand those working in the field of job-related advicewith a view to economic and social development.

3.2.3. Linking passive and active measures

Here the recommendations are very practical. On theone hand, people should not have to forfeit their ben-efits when they move from a passive to an activemeasure or when they set up their own businesses.There must, therefore, be close contact among the

bodies responsible for these two dimensions, socialand economic.

On the other hand, active measures should be di-rected more systematically towards the institutionsor authorities in charge of local economic develop-ment. Some solutions could, for instance, be basedon the promotion of SMEs, the creation of new jobsor services and the development of self-employment.

There seems to be a fairly clear-cut distinction betweenthe role, present and future, of the occupational sup-port, counselling and guidance services, and othermeasures to combat unemployment and exclusion.The argument put forward by support and advice serv-ices is that their essential task is, in the framework oftheir work to improve everybody’s quality of life, to pro-pose active measures to direct people towards em-ployment or a job-related activity. As outlined in previ-ous chapters, the task is to restore a person’s self-confidence, integrate him into society, and help him toenter (or return to) the labour market or sharpen hisskills and expertise with a view to bettering himself.

Encouraging a person to regain his confidence, help-ing him to acquire new qualifications, must not pe-nalise him financially, even for a temporary period.

Although it is not always the domain of occupationalsupport, counselling and guidance services to ar-range a job when someone has completed a specifictraining course, they must make sure that the per-son has the means of subsistence he requires tomake progress. This is far more often classifiedamongst what have been termed as passive meas-ures. It is essential, however, even when an activemeasure has been initiated, so that it can be contin-ued and come to the best possible conclusion.

For instance, if there is one link that must be firmlyestablished and structured, it is to work in close co-operation with social protection and unemploymentbenefit departments, etc.

Various examples have shown that, quite apart fromthe wish to take training or enter the labour market,the financial element – however small – is still reas-suring in certain cases, is the primary considerationin others and may counteract the resolve to betterone’s situation in the longer term.

One of the cases reported is the case of disabledpeople in Seville in particular (Hurley, 1994). TheAsociación para the promoción del Minusválido(PROMI) is an association whose objective is to tryto integrate the (mentally) handicapped in society and

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work. These are grouped according to ability and re-ceive special education and vocational training so thatsome of them can enter the local labour market on avirtually ‘normal’ footing. Apart from the families,which often oppose their disabled member startingto work, regarding them as incapable of doing any-thing, or preferring to keep girls at home to help withsome of the domestic chores, the case history men-tions a regulation which often hampers any attemptto provide training:

‘as disabled people incapable of working, theyreceive a State pension (25 000 to 32 000 pese-tas [in 1994] a month, 14 times a year). If theybecome capable of working, they lose their rightto this pension without being sure of finding a job.’(Hurley, 1994, p. 129).

It is evident, then, that there may still be some inertia inthis field, even though a proportion of the disabled couldundoubtedly do a ‘normal’ job and thereby lead a ‘nor-mal’ life without necessarily having to be supported.

A change in mentality, practices and policies undoubt-edly needs to be introduced to overcome this practi-cal situation, which penalises not only the personconcerned but also the people around him and soci-ety in general. Steps have already been taken at vari-ous levels.

For instance, in the system of self-counselling andactivation for the jobless in Denmark (Hurley, 1994),people continue to receive their normal unemploy-ment benefits while participating in the activities ofInitiativgruppen (Maribo).

In the same way, as already described (Box 5), thebeneficiaries of VUS and VUC who take study leaveto attend a training course receive a weekly subsidyfrom the government. In this job rotation scheme, theunemployed people replacing them receive the samewages as were paid to the workers now in training.

In the framework of socially useful jobs, the exam-ple of Trento (Italy) also shows that good coordina-tion has been established between the counsellingservices and the retirement services. Older unem-ployed people - those nearing retirement age - arerecruited by cooperatives until they have worked therequisite number of years to entitle them to retire-ment benefits.

The Irish programme of socially useful employmentallows an unemployed person who accepts a part-time job or a temporary contract to continue drawinghis allowances.

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Lastly, on the question of retraining and aid for set-ting up in business, always somewhat hazardous, theprogramme of benefits for returning to work enablesthe unemployed to accept a paid job or to becomeself-employed, but retain 75% of their social benefitsfor the first year and 50% for the second. They alsokeep all the secondary benefits. (European Founda-tion for the Improvement of Living and Working Con-ditions – Watt, 1997, p.71).

As mentioned by this Irish report, the programme, incommon with others that have been developed alongthe same lines, enables the long-term unemployedto try out different job opportunities while retaining atleast a minimal degree of financial security.

Other measures to help the unemployed set up theirown businesses have been introduced in severalEuropean Union countries. They follow the same rea-soning of solving the problem of unemploymentthrough individual initiative.

Just as advice or guidance offered on very restrictiveconditions (the recipient must be over 18, have beenunemployed for less than a year, etc.) penalises theindividual and detracts from the image of the serv-ices themselves and the value that should be placedon lifelong education or training, such schemes andforms of cooperation between passive and activeemployment and integration measures are of greatimportance in the development and legitimacy ofoccupational support, counselling and guidance serv-ices. Advice practitioners are those most likely toencourage this enhanced value and more extensiveuse of occupational support, counselling and guid-ance services.

3.2.4. The question of the training of practition-ers and the (re)definition of their duties

Advisers themselves must have nationally certifiedtraining. This should be followed up by continuingtraining so that they can specialise in the advice theygive. For example, sound expertise in the localeconomy is a prerequisite for giving advice on set-ting up a business.

As described throughout this study, the responsibili-ties and practices of support, counselling and guid-ance services are considerable and varied. The grow-ing trend is not to focus solely on the question oftransition (primarily from education to employment)but to extend the help to cover every period and as-pect of life. To provide such services, obviously it is abasic requirement that advice practitioners be ableto respond to such new needs and changes.

If they are to be able to legitimise the work they doand the advice they give, and actually provide a spe-cialist service, it is important that advice practition-ers, in particular salaried practitioners, be suitablytrained. It should be inconceivable that someonewould be trained unless he or she has the basicskills to provide this type of service. This is men-tioned, however, in CEDEFOP’s consolidated reportdealing with the practice of vocational guidance foryoung people in Greece at the time of moving fromthe first to the second cycle (see: Young people’sneeds for vocational guidance: the young popula-tion in general, young people who leave school with-out completing their compulsory education, youngwomen with no skills training, Zanni-Teliopoulou,Stathakopoulou, 1995; the need for vocational coun-selling among different target groups of young peo-ple under 28 years of age in the European Commu-nity, Chisholm, 1994).

At present there is a certain diversity among the pro-fessional profiles of advice practitioners: some ofthem have been trained in the field of vocational guid-ance, others have a general education diploma, whileothers have psychological/social training. The typeof training leads to different advice practices, in whichthe emphasis may be on certain aspects rather thanothers. There is an interaction between the type oftraining taken and the functions that practitioners iden-tify as priorities or as coming more strictly within theirfield of competence.

There is, moreover, a degree of vagueness in thedefinitions practitioners give of their profession, re-sponsibilities and tasks. In the United Kingdom na-tional report (Howieson et al., 1994), some advicepractitioners see their main responsibility as havingenough general knowledge to transfer the client tothe appropriate advice agencies. It is to be hopedthat they will have established the links and createdenough networks to do this work, but in the frame-work of a comprehensive vocational support, adviceand guidance service there is no certainty that thispractice is adequate.

Many people are aware of the growing flexibility ofthe labour market and the need to be familiar withthat market to provide the best possible help to theclient coming to the service. Few people, however,know enough about the job opportunities and possi-ble openings. Some people see themselves as inter-faces between those in need of advice and the vari-ous local operators, or even as catalysts or more sim-ply mediators between the unemployed and employ-ers. They often find it hard to provide information tothose who wish to become self-employed. They see

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33.2 themselves not as business development officers,but rather as educators.

Various programmes or initiatives have already beenlaunched to train advice practitioners. The shopfloorrepresentatives trained at Fakse in Denmark areshown how to give full information and advice on theirworkplace, familiarise them with different subjects:counselling skills, including the ability to listen closely,word processing, understanding budgets, project-centered group work methods (Hurley, 1994, p. 54).They are then asked to draw up a plan with a view toapplying their knowledge to a programme for the ro-tation of employment and training.

In the Self-Development Counselling Group in Ire-land (Hurley, 1994), counsellors are trained to ac-quire a grasp of the economic and social processesleading to unemployment, become aware of their ownresources and abilities and thus help other unem-ployed people (it will be recalled that this system isbased on self-counselling and therefore it is gener-ally the unemployed themselves who provide theservice).

Bearing in mind the various points discussed and thevariety of functions a social worker has to performwithin a vocational support, advice and guidance serv-ice, several factors need to be taken into accountwhen (re)defining the functions of such practitionersand the skills and training they must acquire or de-velop.

Looking at the question of personalised help, it is es-sential that they should have the time to listen to theirclients. One of the first considerations might be toensure that the number of social workers assignedto the task is adequate to ensure that the necessaryattention is given. As things now stand, this is notvery likely. Many departments are under-funded andoperate essentially by recourse to the voluntary sec-tor. Although such voluntary effort is needed for theprocess to be properly conducted, because it arisesfrom a desire to help without any particular self-inter-est, it is also necessary for specialists trained in coun-selling work and appointed to this task to participate,manage and supervise the services provided (as isthe case with the CILOs in Italy). It is indeed indis-pensable bearing in mind the requirements laid downby the OECD, which mentioned one hour’s counsel-ling per month for every unemployed person. Thesepractitioners must also be trained in the task and knowhow to ‘listen’ to every person coming to them.

In the practice of counselling in which the individualis viewed in the global perspective – covering not



60

just his personality but also the route he is taking andhis environment – when drawing up personalisedplans of action, it is essential to train counsellors inmethods of qualitative research that depart some-what from the conventional psychological tests. Guid-ance activities, as they are defined today, can nolonger be restricted to this method, whose resultsdoubtful in some cases, and in all cases very pin-pointed and restrictive – do not give a picture of aperson in his social context and in a very broad per-spective.

Taking the question of the active organisation of serv-ices, advice practitioners must also have the re-sources needed for this task. It may be of interest todevelop new technology that can help them in theirsearch. Furthermore, above all they must be able tokeep abreast of developments on the labour market,they must have contacts with the various local op-erators and the experts in local economic develop-ment and community development so that they canprovide the optimum information on the new oppor-tunities in employment and other activities.

There is undoubtedly a need to create a ‘profession’of advice practitioners. They will require their owntraining and official national recognition. The reporton the case study of the Guidance Network in Brad-ford in the United Kingdom looked forward to the crea-tion of a ‘standard guidance diploma’ (Hurley, 1994).

Two types of guidance practitioner should be entailedin this professionalisation, one as useful as the other:

l The ‘generalist’ with the ability to access informa-tion (on the labour market, job-related pro-grammes, opportunities for special study and train-ing) and set up networks, and who has listeningand evaluation skills, a knowledge of policies, etc.is held in growing regard. Some of the reportsalso note that the generalist must also have ‘acertain experience of life’.

l Besides these generalist competences, there isalso a need for specialist counsellors. In this case,arrangements must be made for further profes-sional training. The Eurocounsel consolidated re-port produced by the European Foundation for theImprovement of Living and Working Conditions(Watt, 1997) envisages the creation of a new pro-fession: the ‘counsellor specialising in the widerlabour market’.

Nevertheless, whatever the title given to either ofthese practitioners, it is important that multidisciplinaryteams can be set up within occupational support,

counselling and guidance services – with generalistsand people who specialise in one sector or another.

Apart from initial training, it is vital that they receivecontinuing training and short courses so they cankeep constantly up to date and informed (especiallyabout the launching of new policies and fresh oppor-tunities) and extend their expertise.

No doubt properly trained personnel, kept constantlyinformed about developments on the labour market,the introduction of new policies, individuals’ demandand the needs – and these too change – are in them-selves a guarantee of a quality service. In additionthere is the concept of proximity, which adds to theeffectiveness of the advice provided.

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Many publications, taking various forms, have beenused in this synthesis report. It gives a picture of thewhole difficulty of grasping the concepts of social in-tegration and entering the working world, from theviewpoint of the provision of advice, help and guid-ance to people confronted with a range of problems.The group of operators taking part in this processhave differing agendas and strategies. There are sev-eral markets side by side. The labour market, ofcourse, but also the supply of and demand for coun-selling, as well as the training market, which oftenfollows on after counselling and guidance. Even so,this report offers a neutral analysis and at the sametime a synthesis of the main findings and recommen-dations put forward by all the authors quoted.

There are several factors that might advance think-ing in these fields.

The individuals to be advised, guided and supportedconsist of varied groups which evolve in different con-texts. Three main target groups have, however, beenidentified in this publication: the marginalised, peoplebecoming marginalised and people who are ‘appar-ently problem-free’. The definition of these three maingroups should not conceal the diversity of the transi-tion situations that individuals have to face. These maingroups should be considered on the lines of Russiandolls in an attempt to arrive at as precise a definitionas possible of the problems experienced by each per-son, taking very many variables into account. The levelof training, the duration of periods of unemployment,the geographic, social and cultural environment, arekey criteria that should be borne in mind in attemptingto provide more effective help and reach the solutionbest adapted to that person’s particular situation.

The initial objectives and the goals of job-centredcounselling and guidance services are coming upagainst a series of new problems due to more or lessrecent economic and social changes:

l the jobs market is saturated, which means thatthe goal of combating unemployment throughoccupational integration and reintegration cannotbe achieved. The solution, then, is to set up re-placement measures and reorient the advice andguidance mission, even though this might createan impression that the service has lost its way;

l improving the level of skills often runs in parallel withentering the working world. But entering or returningto the working world is not always the prime objec-tive in that, when faced with certain groups who havealready gone far down the path to exclusion, the so-cial mission is more immediately useful;

Conclusion

98Lifelong Vocational Guidance:European Case Studies

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l while many services are within the public-sectorframework, others are private and some providedfor a fee. This runs contrary to the prime missionof providing aid and promoting equal opportuni-ties whereby these services, through the help theyprovide, narrow the gap between the recipientsof guidance and those to whom access is denied;

l the ‘best’ services on offer tend to go first of all tothe most qualified. The targeting of public poli-cies towards certain categories of the populationthus often increases the marginalisation of cer-tain groups who are not in the targeted area;

l the proliferation and inconsistency of the servicesoffered to the population often means that the helpprovided is disparate, complicated and not easyfor the user to understand.

Certain recommendations set out in this documentsuggest elements of responses to the problems de-scribed. They point to a redefinition of the mission ofguidance and advice services and their repositioningboth in the routes taken by individuals and within thedifferent service providers. These recommendationsmay be more or less applicable having regard to thelocal or national context, but they help to provide aglobal framework for rethinking the subject.

l Employment should no longer necessarily be thefocus of the service being provided. For instance,counselling should not always concentrate onimmediately finding or returning to employment.Various actions focusing on the individual as awhole person may be undertaken with the objec-tive of achieving active citizenship and formulat-ing life plans.

l Every transition in life may be the subject of coun-selling. Transition should be seen as a move be-tween two different situations (the first job, a re-turn to work, promotion, retirement, etc.). Themove is not always easy and may call for inter-vention from support workers.

l The preference should be for a holistic view of theindividual (looking at his ethnic and social origins,his motivations and aspirations, his way of life, hiseconomic, social, cultural and structural environ-ment) and the aim of the service being promoted.

l Occupational integration and reintegration andmore broadly every form of transition should mo-bilise the individual’s personal resources (self-esteem, determination), the networks of relation-ships, either existing or to be created, and an au-

dit of competences, with due regard to the per-son’s actual potential and his aspirations.

l The end objective, in the case of occupational in-tegration or reintegration, may be broken downinto stages: voluntary work, training, a temporary(and not necessarily paid) job, etc. to help a per-son to find, or restore, a working pace and atti-tudes, self-confidence, an awareness of his skillsand his personal and career aspirations.

l It is therefore essential to phase active measures(which include vocational advice and guidance)and financial aid (a passive measure), so thatthere can be a review of all the aspects that willhelp with entering or returning to the world of workon a durable basis in the medium or long term.

l For the global, personalised approach recom-mended, the services directly associated with vo-cational advice and guidance will not be enoughon their own. Other services (psychological help,social assistance, etc.) can offer specific forms ofintervention which should be combined with them.

l If the ultimate aim is employment, even in the formof temporary and/or unpaid work, networks needto be created with partners in the labour market(employers, trade unions, etc.), in order to liaisebetween the supply of labour and the demand.

l These two latter aspects, the links between theservice providers and the jobs market, can takepractical form only in a local context where closerrelations among the various parties is facilitatedby physical closeness.

l An approach at local level puts things on a morepersonal level and above all makes a preventiveapproach more effective, since it is easier to iden-tify individuals and groups of individuals. It willfacilitate the identification of their special needsand place them in a more clearly defined context.

l The local approach also helps to achieve greaterconsistency among the various services offeredand makes the provision more transparent to thepotential user, and access to information easier.

Thus, the reader must above all bear in mind the vitalneed to think through and administer counselling, aidand guidance – on both social and vocational integra-tion – at as local a level as possible. It is also likely thatcounselling services would become more lastingly ef-fective if they were to take a more systematic and glo-bal an approach and thus anticipate the problems.

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Methods of evaluating counselling services

Whatever the approach adopted, the techniques im-plemented and the help provided by the various serv-ices, it is evidently difficult to evaluate their impactimpartially in that they are not necessarily the onlyfactors affecting the route a person takes. Neverthe-less, while the intrinsic value of such measures can-not be gauged, evaluation at least gives a rather moreprecise picture of the quantity of services alreadyprovided and to be provided, as well as of the qualityand appropriateness of the services and any short-comings.

To find out what has already been achieved and whatneeds to be created or improved as well as the posi-tive and negative aspects of counselling systems,evaluation is essential. The evaluation must be ofthe structures themselves, the way they operate, theirtheoretical basis, their practices and goals. Besidesthis purely institutional aspect, it must cover the peo-ple involved, their role and way of working, their skills,training and capacity to use the tools they need toensure that the services they provide run smoothly.Lastly it must also – and perhaps this is the primerequirement – look at the users, the potential or fu-ture clients, their needs and demands. It is only byknowing what is needed that one can think about whatcan be provided.

Along these lines is the research conducted byCEDEFOP (Chisholm, 1994) on the vocational guid-ance needs of young people under 28 in the Euro-pean Community, and by the European Foundationfor the Improvement of Living and Working Condi-tions, whose Eurocounsel final report (Watt, 1997)proposes a programme of research-action on adviceand long-term unemployment.

The CEDEFOP national reports (see Bibliography)are intended to serve as an inventory of the servicesthat already exist and the way they operate, based toa great extent on an understanding of the people forwhom the services are intended. The objective of theresearch and the ensuing evaluation is clearly to pointout the changes that need to be made so that thesystem matches more closely the needs and de-mands of these young people at times of transition,looking at them from the transnational perspective.The selected target groups also give a clearer ideaof the problems and weaknesses of the theory andof the practice of vocational guidance.

The work of the European Foundation for the Im-provement of Living and Working Conditions –through the Eurocounsel programme – has been

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conducted in three phases. The first step was to pro-duce a table of the provision of services at local level,identifying the basic questions arising in each nationalcontext and the trends in counselling in each partici-pating country. The next step was to study the devel-opments in Europe and what might be seen as ‘goodpractice’. The last step was to make more specificefforts to bring those services in line with the presentand future labour market.

The two types of research are complementary, in thatthe first is mainly concerned with the users – the poten-tial or future clients – while the second is far more con-cerned with the operators and the way in which the serv-ices operate from a more institutional viewpoint.

Both of them reveal related problems, almost identi-cal concerns and an evolving approach; a seriousevaluation and looking at the issue afresh should helpto identify the shortcomings explicitly so that they canbe remedied.

Remedying the shortcomings _ evaluation:quantitative and qualitative

When defining a method of evaluation, several is-sues need to be taken into account, and above allseveral goals. The formulation of policies on adviceand guidance, as these are commonly defined andpractised, cuts across the economic, social and edu-cational sectors. The functions, like the operators,approaches and goals, are different. Evaluation be-comes all the more complicated in that there are sev-eral goals: the search for quality and the quest for prof-itability may often be seen in turn as the main aims. Isthe purpose of evaluation to obtain additional creditsor subsidies for the service in question, on the groundsthat if it is better funded the results or the attentionpaid will be of better quality? Or is it to test the qualityof the services provided and the results in terms ofindividual integration or reintegration, irrespective ofthe number of people catered for and the particularadvantages to the structure (advantages that will bemore in terms of effectiveness and prestige)?

These two questions may be reflected in two typesof evaluation, one more quantitative in scope, theother more qualitative. The aims of the studies differ,but combined they build up an inventory of the cur-rent situation and point to the possibility of improvingthe services offered now or in the future.

Problems of method

One of the first problems to arise, which was intro-duced and discussed right from the first chapter, is

the method to be adopted in targeting the populationgroups who need or who will turn to this type of sup-port, counselling and guidance service. We shall notgo over the subject again; the reader is referred tochapter 1.

When the question is one of evaluating the servicesprovided, the same type of questions arises: how tocategorise the group and the services to be provided,in order to give as precise a picture as possible oftheir scope. Furthermore, the different EuropeanUnion countries do not seem to place the emphasison and promote the same type of evaluation, nor dothey seek the same information. The Eurocounselreport published by the European Foundation for theImprovement of Living and Working Conditions (Watt,1997) tells us that:

‘For example, in Germany, there is currently noclearly defined methodology on the manner ofundertaking such evaluations ... The emphasisseems to be more on the social, political and ad-ministrative dimensions than on economic meas-ures.In other countries, such as the United Kingdomand The Netherlands, for some years now thestress has been on economic evaluation and im-pact analysis ….Other evaluations relate to the effectiveness ofservices ....In other countries, Italy or example, it seems thatthe stress is more on the evaluation of the proc-ess of counselling itself rather than its results...’(p. 92).

Thus, the results sought in each individual countryand the recipient of the evaluation (political decision-maker, the local community, etc.), and the nature ofthe evaluation will differ. Certain evaluations are morein the nature of a cost/benefit analysis, while otherspay closer attention to the quality standards to bemet. Quantitative evaluations, however, appear to bemore frequent.

Various methods have been adopted, depending onthe country and the objectives set, without any beingentirely satisfactory. Of interest in this respect arethe conformity studies, the monitoring and investiga-tion method based on a control group, a brief de-scription of which is given in Boxes 12 to 14. Althoughall these methods have their advantages, they alsohave their limitations. They give only a partial viewrather than what might be a genuine evaluation ofthe services concerned, bearing in mind the diversityof the services provided.

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Box 12

Conformity studies

In essence these have been developed in the UnitedKingdom to measure the results of the provision of(public-sector) vocational guidance.People are divided into two groups:

l those who have followed the advice they are given,who make up what are considered to be the ‘con-forming’ group;

l those who have not taken the advice, identifiedas the ‘non-conforming’ group.

The method of comparison takes as its premise theidea that people in the ‘conforming’ group should dobetter in their working lives.

The results are limited, however, in that the studycannot cover all the approaches adopted in the giv-ing of vocational advice. Is the purpose solely to pro-mote success in one’s working life? Is this really theonly aim? The nature and diversity of the servicesnormally offered give good grounds to doubt this.

Here there is a certain gap between the desired out-come, ‘a career’ and, for example, self-confidence,the feeling of being useful, etc., which may be devel-oped by means of the help offered by the occupa-tional support, counselling and guidance services,without the person’s career prospects necessarilybeing improved.

Box 13

The control group

This, admittedly, is not an easy method to set up... It consists of dividing the group of unemployed, forexample, into two groups:

l one group that has had the benefit of support andadvice;

l another group that has deliberately been offeredno form of support.

The aim is then to compare the progress of the twogroups on their route towards reintegration or a re-turn to work and society.

The first problem with this method is ethical, in that itis tantamount to ‘refusing help to someone in need’!Very few practitioners or structures would lend them-

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selves to this highly discriminatory game, which pe-nalises a person who does not belong to the ‘right’group. It would be unthinkable not to provide helpjust because this would be useful or even vital to theneeds of an investigation, however important.

There is a second limitation to this method: except inthe case of official structures and institutions, it ispractically impossible to prevent a person from tak-ing advantage of an informal support network –friends or family – who will always in some way oranother provide advice or at least its particular viewson the person’s situation, and will therefore set inmotion a particular approach, good or bad, quite sepa-rately from any institutional measure.

Box 14

The monitoring method

This method has been tested in Ireland, Denmark andthe United Kingdom, to mention only three countries.

The test directly involves the users: it consists ofquestioning them at regular intervals on theirprogress, the procedures they have undertaken andthose that have been successful and those that havefailed, etc.

The test is conducted on the basis of interviews andquestionnaires over several periods. It calls upon thememory and understanding of the people being moni-tored and their reliability in returning the questionnaires.

The method helps to evaluate the development of in-dividuals in response to the aid provided by the occu-pational support, counselling and guidance services.

Like any other method of this type, the drawback ofmonitoring is that one has to rely almost solely onthe memory of the interviewee. It has the advantage,however, of the person concerned taking an activepart in the process of evaluation, and also that ac-count can be taken not only of success in work but ofthe individual’s personal or social betterment.

While it appears to be a more comprehensive as-sessment of the services provided by the occupa-tional support, counselling and guidance services andthe results to which they give rise, this method, likethe others, has certain limitations, or at least it doesnot lead to a real evaluation of the benefits or draw-backs of such practices, for several reasons:

l although advice in fact makes a strong impact onan individual’s decisions and the route he will take,

one should not entirely overlook the possible in-fluence of an informal network which may be act-ing at the same time (family, friends, relations,etc.);

l certain effects of counselling may not be visibleand easy to identify, but may take longer to be-come apparent. During this period, other actionsmay have had an influence and the effects – posi-tive or negative – of the measures employed maynot be entirely attributable to the advice given.

l one final point should be taken into account. Thisrelates solely to the personality and prior achieve-ments of a person. It is often the person who al-ready had the best ‘chances’ of success who infact is most successful, and he may well havereached that success without any particular out-side help, though perhaps a little later.

What emerges from an evaluation depends to a greatextent on who commissions it, who conducts it, whatone hopes to emphasise and the end objectives pur-sued in the evaluation (in terms of profitability, forexample). Relatively few people conduct a simulta-neous quantitative and qualitative analysis; both ofthem have their advantages and disadvantages.

Evaluation for a cost/benefit analysis

This more strictly quantitative type of evaluation isconducted primarily for the attention of political deci-sion-makers and funding bodies. It consists of deter-mining the economic value of the services provided.With the steady rise of unemployment and long-termunemployment in Europe, and as it has become everharder for young people to enter the labour market,special measures have been set up. The need tomeasure the impact of these different policies hasbecome more pressing. Cost/benefit analyses andthe results obtained can then be used to present thepolitical arguments in favour of counselling and/orthe special measures put into practice.

The prevailing argument here is profitability. Efficientadvice and guidance can save the Ministry of Fi-nances or Social Protection or others money, by help-ing to match the supply and demand in the field ofemployment more closely.

Given that a multitude of services have been set up inseveral countries, all offering almost similar services,an evaluation that gives a favourable picture of oneparticular service will justify its continuation and maylead to the granting of fresh investment and funding.

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The competition that has been created over recent yearsamong the various aid, advice and vocational guidanceagencies has, moreover, only accentuated this type ofconcern. A relatively recent positive evaluation of coun-selling services will legitimise their work and help themto obtain support, even a degree of prestige and aboveall more substantial funding. And financial support isvital in accomplishing the tasks assigned, as revealedby the case study on the Fundació Trinijove in Spain(Hurley, 1994) in which the level of users’ satisfactionwith the services received and their degree of partici-pation in these services are high. The main difficultiesencountered by Trinijove, however, are financial. All theagencies with which it [the Foundation] works have cuttheir budgets and payments are arriving later and later.Given the growth of the association over the last fewyears and the fact that most of the work is done byvoluntary workers, certain organisational problems havebeen noted (Hurley, 1994, p. 124), which obviously ham-per the smooth running of the system and its perform-ance.

It is easier to measure and analyse the quantitativerather than the qualitative aspects of the services of-fered. Nevertheless, what is clear here is that theevaluation is not arrived at from the users’ viewpoint.

It is fairly surprising, therefore, to note on reading thevarious reports that although the quantitative ap-proach is still the more common, it is also describedfar less. The various documents consulted clearlyprefer to emphasise all the advantages of a qualita-tive study, despite the problems it creates in its reali-sation and analysis.

Evaluation for services adapted to the needs

The principal advantage here is that this type of evalu-ation aims in essence to improve the services them-selves in order to achieve a better quality of supportfor the users. Profitability, the financial question forthe benefit of agencies, seem to be left entirely out ofaccount.

Another advantage is that most of these types ofevaluation start from grass roots, in other words theusers themselves. As described in CEDEFOP’s syn-thesis report (the need for vocational counsellingamong different target groups of young people un-der 28 years of age in the European Community,Chisholm, 1994), account has not been taken of:

‘the needs and/or the demands of different targetgroups of young people based on their economicand social and cultural situation, their values, theircareer plans, their conception of the efficiency ofoccupational guidance offers, etc.’

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It appears that one of the essential elements in thecounselling process is, while it is going on, to obtainparticipants’ reactions so that the service can beadapted more closely and made more effective.

This means that the process of vocational advice andguidance can be approached from a more globalviewpoint than the simple criterion of ‘careers’; in theend, when the evaluation findings are reviewed, guid-ance is obtained on a wider variety of practices thatmatch more closely the needs for guidance and moreaggressive planning strategies in order to meet theneeds of the greatest number.

Spain is one of the countries that uses what is in-tended to be a more typically qualitative approach toevaluation. Box 15 gives a brief description of thepurpose and objective.

Box 15

The dialectic approach to evaluation

The Spanish approach to evaluation is eminentlyqualitative. It attempts to analyse the consequencesof measures in terms of social ‘viability’, studying howoccupational support, counselling and guidancemeasures meet the twofold objectives of perform-ance and economic effectiveness and whether theymake the intended impact on the people concerned.

It has one obvious advantage: it provides an oppor-tunity to discover not only ‘the facts’ but also the vol-ume of the various measures undertaken by the offi-cials participating in the counselling process.

It operates by identifying target groups and throughinterview.

The main disadvantage to be borne in mind is that itappears to be difficult to measure or quantify thisconcept of effectiveness.

Source: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living andWorking Conditions –Eurocounsel Report – Watt, 1997 (p. 93).

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98AAES Regional enterprise creation allowance programme (Ireland)ALI Initiative programme to combat unemployment (Thuringen, Germany)FTC Fixed-term contractsCEDEFOP European Centre for the Development of Vocational TrainingCIBC Centre interinstitutionnel de bilans de compétences (France)CILO Local employment initiative centres (Piedmont, Italy)CIRRSE Caisse interprofessionnelle de retraite par répartition du sud est (France)INEM National institute for employment (Spain)LEC Local technical education centres (Scotland)OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and DevelopmentILO International Labour OfficePIBE Personalised employment search programme (Spain)SMEs Small and medium-sized enterprisesPMI Pro Mente Infirmis, mental and social health association (Austria)PROMI Association for the mentally handicapped (Seville, Spain)TEC Local training and enterprise councils (England and Wales)VUC Adult education centre (Denmark)VUS Adult education subsidy (Denmark)

Life

long

Voc

atio

nal G

uida

nce:

Eur

opea

n C

ase

Stu

dies

Glossary of the mainabbreviations used

70

Bibliography

Synthesis reports

Chisholm, L., 1994.Determining the need for vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under 28years of age in the European Community – Young Europeans and vocational counselling: what do whichyoung people need and want?, CEDEFOP panorama, Synthesis Report, 82 p., April.

Watt, A.G. (Dir.), 1997.‘The Role of the Adult Guidance and Employment Counselling in a Changing Labour Market’, Final Re-port on Eurocounsel: An Action research, Programme on Counselling and Long-Term Unemployment,140p.

Stathopoulos, P.A., 1997.‘Social Occupational Integration at Local Level’, Synthesis report, mimeographed, 80 p.

National reports

Alveca, C., Gaboleiro, C., Bernardo de Lemos, J., 1994.Determination of the school and vocational counselling needs of different target groups of young peopledaged 15 to 27 in Portugal: the case of the Setúbal Peninsula. National Report, CEDEFOP, April, 88 p.

Fandel, C., Pauwels, D., 1994.Les besoins des élèves des classes de 9ème de l’enseignement secondaire technique et des sortants del’enseignement complémentaire en matière d’orientation au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, national report,CEDEFOP, 52 p.

Fernández de Castro, I., De Elejabeitia, C., 1994.Determining the need for vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under 28in Spain – First target group: women whose chief activity is domestic work in their own homes (autono-mous community of Madrid); second target group: young people of both sexes affected by industrialreconversion on the left bank of the Bilbao estuary), national report, CEDEFOP, 115 p.

Howieson, C., Hurley, N., Jones, G., Raffe, D., 1994.The vocational guidance needs of young people in full-time employment and homeless young people inthe United Kingdom, national report, CEDEFOP, 126 p.

Maaløe, I., 1994.Determining the need for vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under28 in the European Union – Young people in Denmark and their counselling needs, national report,CEDEFOP, 108 p.

McCarthy, J., 1994.Determining the need for vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under 28in Ireland. Case study: disadvantaged rural youth, national report, CEDEFOP, 51 p.

Ouali, N., Rea, A., Vanheerswynghels, A., 1994.Determining the need for vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under 28in the European Community – Definition of two target groups – Belgium, national report, CEDEFOP, 45 p.

Schweitzer, C., Wolfinger, C., 1995.Determining the need for vocational counselling among different target groups of young people under 28in Germany – Target group: girls and young women, CEDEFOP, 105 p.

Wijnaendts van Resandt, A., 1994.Vocational guidance needs of homeless young people in the Netherlands – Young Drifters, national re-port, CEDEFOP, 48 p.

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98Bibliography

Zanni-Teliopoulou, C., Stathakopoulou, P., 1995.The vocational counselling needs among different target groups of young people under 28 in Greece– the young population in general, young people who leave school without completing compulsoryeducation, young women with no skills training (Greece), national report, CEDEFOP, 94 p.

Local reportsCEDEFOP, 1996.Final Report on the CEDEFOP Project in Connemara, Ireland, CEDEFOP – Cumas Teo, 62 p.

CEDEFOP, 1997.Social and Occupational Integration of Young People on the Local Level – A Reflection on Kalmar(Sweden), CEDEFOP, 70 p.

CIAPI, 1997.Social and occupational Integration of Young People on the Local Level: Modica – Ragusa, CEDEFOP, 26 p.

CIBC, 1996.Social and occupational Integration of Young People on the Local Level: 15th and 16th districts ofMarseilles, CEDEFOP, October, 73 p. + annexes.

Cotton, P., 1996.Social and vocational integration of young people at the local level – Pilot district of Ath and Lessines(West Hainaut), Belgium, CEDEFOP, final report, 59 p, June.

Deliyanni-Kouimtzi, V., Psalti, A., Bournoudi, E., 1996.Local Networks for Promoting Underprivileged Young People to the Labour Market, Final abstractreport, CEDEFOP, May.

Gavira, L., Gonzalez, F., 1996.Social and Vocational Integration of Young People on the Local Level – Carmona Pilot District, Seville, CEDEFOP,72 p.

Hietala, A.L., 1996.Social and Occupational Integration of Young People on the Local Level – Koillismaa, Oulu andRaahe Regions in Finland, CEDEFOP, 71 p.

Reiberg, L., Schürmann, W., Worth, M.A, Jung, I., Böll, M., 1996.Social and Vocational Integration of Young People at Local Level – Cologne’s Mülheim/Kalk and PorzPilot Districts, Final report, CEDEFOP, 74 p.

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Sessar-Karpp, E., Korfes, G., Al’Dahoodi, U., 1996.Social and Vocational Integration of Young People at Local Level – Potsdam and Dresden Pilot Districts,CEDEFOP, July, 60 p.

Stathacopoulou, P., Papadimitriou-Sahini, A., Teliopoulou-Zanni, K., 1996.Social and Vocational Integration of Young People at the Local Level – Greece, CEDEFOP, March.

Tolentino, D., Dorazio, M., Arcobello Varlese, G., 1997.The Social and Occupational Integration of Young People at Local Level – The Case of Ostia – DistrictXIII, final report, CEDEFOP, 56 p.

Additional bibliography

European Commission, 1997.Employment in Europe, Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, Em-ployment and Labour Market series, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Lux-embourg, 144 p.

Cresson, É. and Flynn, P. (ed.), 1995.White Paper on Education and Training. Teaching and learning – Towards a society of knowledge. Euro-pean Commission, DG XXII – Directorate-General for Education, Training and Youth, Brussels; DG V –Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, Employment and LabourMarket series, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 107 p.

Delors J, 1993.Growth, competitiveness, employment. The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century. WhitePaper. Commission of the European Communities, COM(93) 700 final, Brussels, 5 December 1993.

Eurocounsel, 1994.A Guide to Good Practice in Labour Market Counselling, European Foundation for the Improvement ofLiving and Working Conditions, Dublin, 19 p.

European Union, European Commission, Directorate General V, 1998.Guidelines for employment in 1998: Council Resolution of 15 December 1997, European Commission,Luxembourg.

Hurley, N., 1994.Case Study Portfolio - Examples of Innovative Practice in Labour Market Counselling, Eurocounsel, Eu-ropean Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin, 150 p.

Watt, G., 1993.Counselling and Long-Term Unemployment: Report on Phase II of the Eurocounsel Action Research Pro-gramme, Working paper, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 31 p.

Watt, G., 1994.Eurocounsel Conference Report - Improving Counselling Services for the unemployed and for those atrisk of unemployment, report on the conference in Dublin on 24-26, May 1993, European Foundation forthe Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 101 p.

Watt, G., 1993.Counselling and Long-Term Unemployment. Report on Phase I of the Eurocounsel Action ResearchProgramme, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 112 p.

Watt, G., 1994.Eurocounsel – Final synthesis report 2 - Counselling - a Tool for the Prevention and Solution of Unemploy-ment, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 155 p.

CEDEFOP – European Centre for the Development of Vocational TrainingEUROPEAN FOUNDATION for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

Lifelong Vocational Guidance: European Case Studies

Sylvie Chiousse, Patrick Werquin

CEDEFOP panorama

Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities

1999 – 75 pp. – 21.0 x 29.7 cm

ISBN 92-828-4121-9

Cat.-No: HX-15-98-148-EN-C

Free of charge – 5079 EN –

Documents

Lifelong Vocational Guidance - Cedefop · ety’ (1995), major principles for action have been stated. In 1997, in its Communication, ‘Towards a Europe of knowledge’, the Commission