Page 100 - Professionalising-career-guidance-practitioner-competences-and-qualification-routes-in-Europe

differences highlight the need for each organisation to consider how use of the competence
framework might contribute to furtherance of their distinctive service delivery.
Such organisations will normally be employers or contractors of career guidance
practitioners. The range of uses for the competence framework could include:
(a) using the framework to decide which of the elements within it their organisation should
offer to their users; a corollary of this is exploring how to access for their users any
services that they are not able to provide themselves;
(b) deciding and recording the conditions and standards of the service they will offer. This
has implications both for the ways in which services are explained and publicised to
potential users, and for the standards that are set for staff performance, with possible
implications for recruitment and selection (see Section 5.5.);
(c) mapping individual staff roles to the various functions, so that there is clarity about which
staff members perform which range of tasks;
(d) using standards set (as in activity (b) above) to underpin a number of staff development
functions such as staff appraisals, identifying training needs, arranging continuing
professional development, and encouraging peer-learning groups among staff;
(e) developing a framework for the accreditation of prior experience and learning (APEL) for
their staff (see also the case study on Denmark in Section 4.3.);
(f) informing the evaluation of services, including their methods for seeking feedback from
service users.

7.3.2. Professional associations of career guidance practitioners
Professional associations of career guidance practitioners exist in many countries; in others,
new associations are being formed as career guidance becomes a recognised area of
professional activity. In a number of countries with a long history of career guidance
activities, there are several professional associations serving memberships in different
sectors of career guidance delivery.
Professional associations might use the competence framework both in relation to their
own members and as a way of cooperating with each other:
(a) forming and expressing publicly a view on the services that should be offered in their
country or sector;
(b) establishing a professional view on the standards and conditions that should apply to
professional practice;
(c) delivering or arranging access to relevant training for their members;
(d) creating an assessment framework to underpin a system of membership entitlement
and/or registration to practise;
(e) aligning qualification requirements to facilitate movement of individual career guidance
practitioners between sectors.

7.3.3. Career guidance practitioners
There is considerable emphasis within the framework on the need for career guidance
practitioners to develop their own practice. The competence framework can provide:

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