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5.3.2. Culture, context and personal values

The design and delivery of career guidance services is not value-free. Both the user of
services and the career guidance practitioner bring their own contextual and cultural
background and a set of personal values. The services to be provided by the practitioner and
accessed by the user are normally a product of national or organisational policy. As an
example, the Lisbon strategy’s integrated guidelines for growth and jobs (European
Commission, 2005b) and the national employment strategies of most Member States,
promote maximum rates of gainful employment (full employment) as a central policy goal; but
not every citizen will wish to comply with this policy goal. In this and other respects, some
career guidance practitioners may have reservations about the ways in which policy goals
are applied to their work. Many social, cultural, economic and personal circumstances and
attitudes come into play in the process of helping people to manage the educational, training
and occupational choices which make up their career, whether in paid work, voluntary roles
or outside of the formal economy. Work may be sought for intrinsic enjoyment and reward, or
for extrinsic reward (notably financial), or may not be desired at all.
This competence framework can only indicate the importance of the personal
philosophies and world-views of both the career guidance practitioner and the user of their
services. Each career guidance practitioner needs to develop high levels of personal
reflectiveness; this is indicated in the foundation competence on clients’ diverse needs. The
brevity of description of the competence framework does not allow extended exploration of
these issues, but they are extremely important in applying the framework to particular
situations of career guidance work.

5.4. Understanding specific elements within the competence
framework

This section contains comment relating specifically to two of the client-interaction
competences: assessment and to client access to information.

5.4.1. Client-interaction element: conduct and enable assessment

The term assessment covers a wide range of actions, from the most general assessment
through first impressions gained on meeting a stranger, to the detailed and formalised
assessments of mental and/or physical capabilities that might be carried out by psychologists
or medical staff. The definition of career guidance which guides this project includes
‘help(ing) people to reflect on their ambitions, interests, qualifications and abilities’, which
implies self-assessment through both informal and formalised methods. Career guidance
makes use of many methods of assessment, in response to different needs. Their range is
indicated within this element of the competence framework, which is intended to be inclusive of
all such activities, but not to imply that all, or any, should apply with any specific client. In this
respect, this element is different in quality from all the other elements, where it is assumed that
all ‘main tasks’ (left-hand column) will apply, although in ways that are guided by the ‘contexts
and conditions’ (right-hand column) of each career guidance practitioner’s work situation.

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