Nchimunya’s Blog

Wow it’s nearly over and a perfect opportunity to reflect and where I am and where I want to be in terms of my career.  The Post Grad Diploma has been a personal goal for me for about 5 years. After everyone got fed up with me talking about it, someone said to me ‘just do it’ and thankfully that’s exactly what I did. It’s not been easy, but a huge achievement and now I can say I’ve done it!  So where am I now in terms of my career. I now have more doors open to me and I don’t want to close any of these doors right now as I think there are lots of good organisations out there doing lots of effective and intersting work. However, I still feel passionately about working with and supporting volunteers, and ideally I’d like to work for an organization that invests in its volunteers, supports them and helps them use their experiences to develop themselves.  I want to be able to support volunteers to transfer their skills into future opportunities and choices, whether that is employment, training or education.

My ideal careers organization would be one that provides guidance to all ages and covering all aspects of career choices. A holistic approach is taken with clients.  Clients are allocated a reasonable amount of time with the practitioner and encouraged to return for further support. Emphasis will be placed on the client making the right decision for themselves (and not the organisation) and if this involves longer sessions over a period of time then resources will be allocated to this.

Staff are trained in a wide variety of techniques and given the skills and knowledge to know when it is most effective to use them. They will be given autonomy to use which ever technique they feel appropriate for the client. 

Guidance will be available for those having been made redundant or facing redundancy. Additionally, retirement guidance will be offered to those facing the end of their professional working lives to address issues that people face at such a significant time in their lives and look at future opportunities for perhaps volunteering or a new career challenge. This will be a growing area of work for the ageing population. 

Strong community links will be established in order to know when to refer or sign post clients.  Staff will be invited from other organsiations to talk about their services and share knowledge, skills and approaches. Employers and Educational institutions will be invited in to keep staff upto date with current practices, information and initiatives.

Weekly team meetings will be held with all staff to keep staff updated on current issues and developments within the organization.

Managers have a case load of clients and will be involved in peer reviews.

Consultations will be held with clients on organizational and staff performance. 

360 degree appraisals will be held with all members of staff to ensure a high quality of service and performance. Feedback will be sought from peers, managers and clients.

Clients will be encouraged to consider volunteering, particularly for those who are not job ready, finding it hard to gain employment or wanting to change careers.

An intergenerational mentoring programme will be established which is run by a Volunteer Manager. People seeking careers advice can be allocated a mentor who can support them through their career decisions or difficulties. Clients will be encouraged to be mentors as will local employers.

Staff will be given time off for volunteering in the local community!

I have been very impressed with the staff at Apex, their knowledge and commitment to working with offenders and ex offenders.  If you want to see non judgmental, person centered, constructivist approaches and realism in action this is the place! It would be almost impossible notto take an holistic approach with this client group.

Apex works with offenders, ex offenders and those at risk of offending by helping them realise their potential and address their employability needs. The clients face multiple barriers to employment. It is astonishing really how many barriers these people face.  During my 2 weeks at Apex the barriers I came across with clients were, convictions, low literacy levels, dyslexia, homelessness, temporary housing, addictions, lack of skills and poor education.

Everyone who walks in the door at Apex, what ever their conviction is treated with respect.  Apex run a number of different programmes and is fortunate that a ‘positive outcome’ for the client is employment, training, in house training or volunteering. This make it much easier to work with the client and find the opportunity that suits them.

One of the ways in which Apex helps ex offenders to alleviate the barrier of their offence is by compiling a ‘letter of disclosure’. What is interesting about this is that it contextualizes the offence and clearly outlines why the person committed the offence, what was happening at the time in the persons life, what they have done to move forward and where they want their future to go.  This appeared to be a really useful tool for the practitioner to encourage the client to tell their story.  Not all this information could be ascertained from one interview and it required a level of trust in order for the information to be offered. Often it took a number of meetings for all the relevant information to be given.  Working with this client group requires relationships to be built up over a period of time. 

Promotion of the Rehabilitation of Offenders act is vital for ex offenders as it is this that protects them from being discriminated against. It isn’t the easiest of topics to talk about as it involves some complex legal information, however, I felt that the session delivered in the prison to ‘due to be released’ inmates was very worthwhile.  Some of these guys at Saughton had no idea about the Act, what a spent conviction was or the benefits of disclosing to an employer. This was vital work that Apex was doing. A very hard job which I felt was delivered very well and received very well. Being able to talk to a group of prisoners some with very serious offences takes some doing.  A need to understand the issues they face on release, how they construct their world  and a true understanding of their lives.

The photos are of the 10 week Think Again course run in conjunction with Napier University. A widening participation project designed to develop ‘stepping stones’ for harder to reach  people to access further and higher education. The course takes a holistic approach which is both practical and creative.  The employability path is developed alongside wider support of progression including teamworking, confidence building, managing drug issues and other issues concerned with housing, finances etc.  The creative activities can be seen in the photos and include creative writing, photojournalism, art and graffiti. This part of the course has been very successful. The course recognizes that everyone has their own path and everyone is supported in whichever path they take. The creative work shows them that what comes from inside them has value, and there is no right or wrong way of doing it.

I felt there was some really interesting work going on at Apex, although when asked what approaches they used I got the usual ‘person centered’ answer. I think they were definitely carrying out constructivist work unintentionally, and that perhaps there was more work they could be doing to make this more effective. They did seem to be active in visiting and learning from others organizations and in house training was apparently exceptional.

Slowly but surely I’m beginning to understand what it means to be a career practioner in the postmodern world. How can we be effective in our work if we don’t embrace and internalize constructivist philosophy and approaches. We cannot ignore the complexities of peoples lives, the diversity of our communities and the changing world of careers. If we do we run the risk of not meeting the needs of our clients, being dissatisfied in our work and not addressing equality of opportunity.

The increasing diversity and complexity of peoples lives means that we cannot provide guidance without contextualizing. When we put peoples careers into context we will need to address other issues such as diversity, barriers to employment and significant others. Counselling will inevitably be part of our work and we mustn’t be afraid to take on this role. We can do this by continuing to update skills, reflecting on our practice, receiving feedback from our clients and observe colleagues work. We must also be able to recognize when referring and signposting is required, even if it does run the risk of ‘losing clients’ to other agencies.

Guidance is not just about taking people on a career planning journey using trait and factor approaches. However, this is the way of working at Careers Scotland and hence perhaps why only 20 minutes is allocated to clients and 40 minutes if they are lucky. These time frames do not allow for a subjective perspective to be taken. This must also be the reason why the term Career Advisor (soon to be replaced with Skills Advisor) is used and not counselors. This speaks volumes for me and sends messages that CS is not about to embrace constructivist approaches in any way.

It concerns me that we are becoming more individualistic and communities are being weakened.  I feel that communities are essential at all levels. I particularly enjoyed Grant’s last two sessions on this topic.  People generally have become too materialistic and concerned with wealth.  People do not know who lives on their street, are less concerned with social issues around them and are not aware of the impact of their actions.  There are of course many complex reasons for this and I can see that Government policy has a lot to do with it.  Take for example out of town shopping centres. Nobody walks to the corner shop anymore. New housing developments are built with parking spaces outside the front door and people think that money will make them happy and replace the need for extended families and community interaction. What can be done to encourage a sense of community?

I agree with Stoll (1995) that ‘computer networks isolate us from one another rather than bring us together’ .  We can’t deny the huge benefits that the internet has brought us in terms of information sharing and global communication but yes it is has the potential to undermine interpersonal relationships.  I always make an effort to pick up the phone to speak to friends and family, and try to prevent online friendships. OK it’s convenient, quick, fun and instant but people need to interact, support each other, spend time together, laugh and cry together and share experiences.  I spent a couple of years working in Africa and was away from family and friends for this time. The most important times for me were when the regional plane or train arrived twice a week with the post bag!  I have kept all the lengthy and considered letters that were written to me during this time.  They meant so much to me and now I can’t remember the last time I received a hand written letter.

I also don’t think social networking is particularly ‘healthy’, however I do participate in it, sometimes reluctantly as I feel I wouldn’t be in touch with some people if it wasn’t for Facebook!   Yes, and it is fun but on reflection I pick and choose who I communicate with according to the strength of my off-line relationship with them.

We can’t expect communities to be ready made for us.  It is us as individuals who must take responsibility for building our communities and strengthening them. We must be aware of our social capital and utilise and share it in order to help those around us and the communities we live in. Social capital is what holds communities together and moves them forward. 

I like the idea of community guidance, bringing guidance out of bureaucracy of Careers Scotland.  Much of my working life has been spent managing volunteers. It was only recently that I started to think that I would like to combine Volunteer Management and Career Guidance, and one of the reasons why I chose to do this course.  This combination could be a part of community guidance, along with putting the individual at the centre of policies and strategies. Partnership working between agencies also has to be successful for this approach to work. Unfortunately I’m not sure how effective this approach can be in the current climate of competition for funds, with unrealistic targets being set by funders and community politics. For example on my placement in North Edinburgh I was working for an agency working with the long term unemployed, working to very high targets. Along the road was the new Volunteering Hub created by the Volunteer Centre, designed to enable the local community to enhance their employability skills through volunteering.  It was frustrating to see a clear lack of joined up working between the two organisations, and in fact a lack of signposting for fear of ‘losing’ their clients to another agency.  So, until mutual trust can be built up between organisations and the problem of competition for funding is resolved, community guidance has got a long way to go before it can really benefit individuals and communities.

Volunteering is a fantastic way for individuals to enhance their employability skills, experience the work place, stengthen communities and enable generations to interact.  Not only does it benefit the individual but also the community.  I have been disappointed on both my placements so far that people are not encouraged to volunteer more, especially those who are socially excluded. One of the reasons for this is that it is not classed as an ‘outcome’ in reports that funders require to monitor these agencies.

I didn’t really enjoy the Centigrade interviews and I’ve been trying to work out why that was.  I think that there are a number of reasons for this.  Too much time was spent focusing on the results of the report.  In hindsight I can see that the usefulness of this is quite limited because it isn’t actually time spent talking with the pupil about what is going on for them.  I found that I missed several key bits of information that the clients gave me because they were just ‘dropped’ into the conversation at random points and therefore I didn’t take hold of them and explore them further with the client. If I had done so I think I would certainly have carried out a more constructive interview.  Secondly I feel that my active listening skills were not utilised. Normally I am quite a good listener and I think one of my strong points. however, the report distracted me so much that like I said before I was only ‘hearing’ key pieces of information that I really should have picked up on.  I felt disappointed by this.  Perhaps it would have been more useful if the pupils had seen the reports first and then less time would have needed to have been spent ‘explaining’ it and more time focusing on some of the ideas it had thrown up for them and how realistic some of the options were.

Oh and my assumptions were totally wrong!! No surprise there.

I haven’t done my Centigrade interviews yet but have been reading the blogs of some of the people that have. I’ve been trying to prepare for tomorrows interviews, but the more I read the blogs the more I’m concerned about my expectations and assumptions of the 2 pupils I have. I have already found myself making assumptions about one pupil in particular and this I don’t like. I think I preferred interviewing the S3′s where we didn’t have any previous information and therefore concentrated more on preparing our skills and techniques for the interview. I think maybe I’m reading too much into the results, and from what some of you had said they bare no resemblance to what the pupils actually say on the day!

I can already see flaws in this ‘matching’ process as some parts of the forms are incomplete and therefore some of the results are inconclusive. This asks bigger questions as to why the forms are incomplete? Were the pupils given insufficient instructions when filling them out, were they having a bad day, do they not really care, were they given enough time? All leading to the question how effective and useful are the ‘matching’ techniques? Maybe I’ll feel different tomorrow. Watch this space!

It was refreshing to be presented with the PCP today. An approach that appears to be person centred and non directive, allowing the client to identify their own constructs and tell their own story. It seems much more innovative than the traditional ‘trait and factor’ theories where you are matched against criteria that you are asked if you like / dislike without perhaps never having the opportunity to experience them.

However, after my placement at Working Links and seeing the deprivation and situations that many people find themselves in I am struggling with the parts of the theory that say ‘we never need to be trapped by our past as we are all capable of reconstructing’ and ‘we each have responsibility for the sort of person we are’. It appears that the theory has weaknesses here. I feel that some people are disadvantaged by the circumstances they are brought up in – poverty, deprivation, poor health, addictions, lack of education and I witnessed this first hand on my placement. I can see that PCP would have benefited some of clients I met at Working Links, but the target driven environment within which the organization works would have limited the organizations ability to find time and resources to deliver this to individual clients.

I also wonder at what point the Career Advisor can give information about specific options that might be required by the client in order to move their thinking forward about different occupations. 

I do like this approach particularly the self characterization tool. Although I don’t feel confident enough at this early stage in my learning to use the whole technique I do think I would take parts of it such as this and incorporate it into an interview / or lesson where possible. I also like the idea of having lots of different tools to use with clients and I guess with experience we will learn which ones suit which clients best. I feel though as a ‘new’ careers advisor I will initially use ‘safe’ options that I feel comfortable / confident with and have had more experience of using. It has made me realise that it would be great to work in a forward thinking environment which is open to using and learning new techniques such as the PCP.

I think that both have their place in career education for young people in schools.  However, groupwork should not be delivered using such a prescriptive tool such as ‘Career Box’.  It is quite evident from my time spent in CS and on school placement that many CA’s  and Guidance teachers do not find it flexible enough to meet the requirements of their pupils.  I’d be interested to know how Career Box was put together and how the material was chosen. Is it regularly reviewed?   I got the impression that many CA’s felt they had better material than what CB was offering.  How reflective is CS as an organisation? Do they invite CA’s to feed into the development of such a tool as Career Box. Many CA’s have years of vital experience.

Groupwork is obviously effective for giving pupils the skills and knowledge needed to make informed decisions about their chosen careers.  However, it is a choice that is made on an individual basis and I think that a better relationship needs to be developed with the CA’s in schools and not just at the key transition points.  I have seen on my placement at Working Links young people who have recently come out of the education system and seemed to have slipped through the CS net and not even met their CA.  More emphasis is needed on building that one to one relationship with the individuals if we are to see less young people leaving school without education, employment  or training.

I can certainly see the vital importance of Rogers 3 core conditions to counselling relationships.  When all 3 are at play the client is allowed to be at ease, open and able to establish trust in the counsellor.  This is essential for a positive outcome for the client. However, I do believe that there are limitations to the theory particularly when information and /or advice giving is needed for the process to be completed.  Career guidance usually requires some information to be given at some time in the process in order for the client to move towards a decision making process. A client can not progress without this information. There must be space within the theory for the practioner to deliver their area of ‘expertise’ to the client. As far as I understand pure ‘person-centred counselling’ is non directive and relies solely on practioner to empower the client to discover self help strategies.

I do think however the relationship is still extremely important between career advisor and client.  Trust needs to be built up and for guidance to be most effective it needs to be on-going. If the trust and rapport is not there a client is unlikely to return. Hence, the CA needs to underpin their relationship with Rogers 3 core conditions and build on it with their own expertise.

Are all counsellors able to display all 3 conditions with ease?  Can they be genuine with their unconditional positive regard and empathy?  I feel that unconditional positive regard in particular is very difficult when faced with specific challenges such as ex offenders committing serious crimes etc. We all have to be aware of our own stereotyping and not everyone is able to do this.

I’m also questioning whether this approach is suitable for all clients. Some may prefer a more directive approach and perhaps not have such well developed ‘self help’ skills that are required for the approach to be effective. Additionally it must be remembered that the guidance interview is just a part of the process of career guidance, it can sit alongside other activities including group work, tests and information giving.