Page 7 - Professionalising-career-guidance-practitioner-competences-and-qualification-routes-in-Europe

Foreword

There is a clear consensus in Europe that high quality guidance and counselling services
play a key role in supporting lifelong learning, career management and achievement of

personal goals. The shift to lifelong guidance in the Member States can best be supported
through European cooperation and by means of partnerships between national and regional
authorities, social partners, guidance practitioners in education and employment, and young,
adult and senior citizens as service users.
Establishing a coherent and holistic guidance system that is accessible over the whole
human lifespan has clear implications for the competences, qualifications and continuous
professional development of guidance practitioners. The issues of improving the professional
profile and standards of guidance practitioners, and promoting their competences and skills,
have been addressed in this report. Appropriate initial and further training of guidance
counsellors is crucial as they have a central position in guidance service delivery and
development.
Guidance and counselling is undergoing gradual change, resulting from the complex
demands placed by the society on career guidance practitioners, their working environments,
and client groups becoming more diverse. In the coming years, we may expect career
guidance practitioners to become more deeply involved in new areas such as validation of
non-formal and informal learning, accreditation of prior learning and prior experiential
learning. Moreover, guidance practitioners should become well acquainted with European
VET policy initiatives, especially with the European qualifications framework for lifelong
learning (EQF), and the European credit system for vocational education and training
(ECVET). All these new responsibilities will call for continuing professional development as
well as continuous demonstration of relevant competences from individual guidance
practitioners in the Member States.
This Cedefop supports the Council resolution on better integrating lifelong guidance into
lifelong learning strategies (Council of the European Union, 2008) that fully acknowledges
Cedefop’s research work and its leading institutional role in lifelong guidance. The core
message of this report is that there is a huge variation across Europe in terms of professional
training available, competences and qualifications acquired through such training, roles and
functions carried out by guidance practitioners and settings in which guidance services are
offered. The report is a valuable reference source, especially for policy- and decision-makers
as well as trainers of guidance practitioners in education and employment.
We hope that this report will stimulate future action in the Member States on developing
competences and qualifications for career guidance practitioners, as well as reinforcing their
role in assuring high quality in service delivery.

Aviana Bulgarelli
Director of Cedefop

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