While “guidance counselor” in the United States has routinely come to mean a desk-bound administrator who dispenses college applications, England has just created “personal advisers” for youth who will actually get personal and actually advise.
Under the plan unveiled last month, every 13- to 19-year-old in England will get a personal adviser to help make key decisions about careers and life choices. The advisers will be members of a new youth support service to be called Connexions. The service will be available to all youth but will be targeted at those most at risk of dropping out of school or vocational training programs.
The British government sees the initiative as going beyond mere information on job choices, offering young people personal support on difficulties at school or home. The program was launched by Education Minister David Blunkett, who said that “wrong career choices” had enormous social costs in unemployment, crime and wasted lives. Prime Minister Tony Blair called it “our front-line policy for young people.”
Teens will access the service partly through schools, but local youth services will contribute staff and work with kids outside of school, including through street outreach. The program will also have a store-front presence in major towns. Some 20,000 advisers will cover a country of 50 million, roughly the population of California and Texas combined.
The job of personal adviser will draw staff from among the ranks of career advisers, youth workers and education welfare officers (who work with truants and dropouts). The government has said the new profession “must be underpinned by a robust training framework.” The government will set up a training program, and it is looking into establishing new accreditation qualifications as well as a new national college for campus-based and distance-learning training for advisers and their managers.
The opposition Conservative Party labeled it “yet another example of government interference and the nanny state.” Conservative education spokesperson Teresa May said: “What will parents think when their teenager is told, ‘If you have a problem, don’t speak to your parents, ring the government?'”
England’s youth work field, which has a far more advanced infrastructure than its U.S. counterpart, has generally welcomed the new service as showing a positive commitment to supporting young people. But there was some concern that the service might siphon funds from existing, wider-ranging youth development work. Tom Wylie, chief executive of the youth work support body the National Youth Agency, said Connexions should not focus too narrowly on individual guidance, but blend with existing youth services to establish “a nationwide, coherent system to help all young people lead more fulfilling lives.”
Contact: www.connexions.gov.uk/strategy.htm.
