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encompasses the Irish government’s Enterprise Strategy Group initiative for its country’s
workforce).
The nature and quality of private individual decisions are now a matter of considerable
public importance, as are the extent and quality of the career guidance services available to
support them. Such services need to be widely accessible on a lifelong basis, to serve the
needs of individuals, the economy and wider society. A training centre in the Netherlands
emphasises in its vision statement that career development is not merely a body of activities
to develop a career. Instead, the statement continues, it is a particular approach for
participation in society which is one of the main issues in Europe. Especially through
employment, citizens become engaged and are able to contribute to a social and democratic
society. A job is not only for earning money, but also a carrier (‘career’) for personal
development and leverage for community building.
Complex education and training systems, and the opportunities they provide in formal as
well as non-formal and informal settings, are not very transparent for most individuals. As a
consequence, most citizens require support for their career planning in order to choose
between different education and training options as well as to manage transitions from
education to labour market successfully. It is against this background that policies and
strategies for guidance and career counselling have become a political priority in Europe.
The Member States – perhaps more strongly than ever before – acknowledge that
adequately trained career guidance practitioners are a prerequisite for making high quality
guidance service provision a reality for every European citizen.

1.3. Characteristics of effective career guidance systems

Contributors to this study have been clear that one of the necessary characteristics of a good
career guidance system is that it must be ‘both widespread and target-group specific;
extensive and intensive’ (Austrian contributor). Previous reports (OECD, 2004;
Sultana, 2003) have shown career guidance provision to be mixed across Europe. In almost
every country, there are examples of good practice, alongside significant gaps in provision.
Many European countries are actively addressing a range of gaps in their current
provision. Some of these relate to the characteristics of particular potential users of services,
including older people, those in rural areas and those in employment; the latter group is the
subject of a recent European study (Cedefop, 2008a). In other countries there is more
general recognition of the need for ‘proactive and preventative guidance for groups with
non-traditional career histories’. What is viewed as a ‘non-traditional career history’ may vary
from one circumstance to another: the term encompasses a wide range of issues that are
commonly listed when the need for diversity in service delivery is considered.
Other identified gaps relate to the provision of particular aspects of career guidance
services. In some countries there are no national systems for collecting and disseminating
key elements of the information required for effective career guidance. Greece and Iceland,
for example, report a lack of publicly available labour market information, limiting the ability of
career guidance practitioners to introduce discussion of trends and skill requirements with
their service users.

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