Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa
Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa
Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa
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CHAPTER 10<br />
Career development in later working life: implications for career guidance with older workers 187<br />
actively involved with older people from the beginning of the older years (age<br />
45 plus) to around 70 years, but the potential impact of these decades in<br />
working <strong>and</strong> learning extends for the rest of the lifespan. This chapter focuses<br />
specifically on the role of careers advisers: those whose primary responsibility<br />
is to help people to make personally satisfying choices about work <strong>and</strong><br />
learning at all stages of their lives.<br />
Career guidance refers to services intended to assist people, of any age<br />
<strong>and</strong> at any point throughout their lives to make educational, training <strong>and</strong><br />
occupational choices <strong>and</strong> to manage their careers. Career guidance helps<br />
people to reflect on their ambitions, interests, qualifications <strong>and</strong> abilities. It<br />
helps them to underst<strong>and</strong> the labour market <strong>and</strong> education systems, <strong>and</strong> to<br />
relate this to what they know about themselves (OECD, 2004, p. 19).<br />
Much policy attention has been focused on the role of the careers adviser<br />
in relation to knowledge <strong>and</strong> underst<strong>and</strong>ing of opportunity structures <strong>and</strong><br />
labour-market information, <strong>and</strong> sometimes perception of the role extends little<br />
beyond this. Hirsch (2005) comments on the UK situation: ʻover the past few<br />
years, the government has promoted provision of guidance to adults, in<br />
particular through the establishment of local information, advice <strong>and</strong> guidance<br />
partnerships. As Geoff Ford ( 39 ) spells out, ʻthis has had a limited impact,<br />
particularly for older adults, partly because of low take-up <strong>and</strong> partly because<br />
such services are better designed to provide relatively low-level advice <strong>and</strong><br />
information rather than potentially life-changing guidanceʼ (Hirsch, 2005, p. 8).<br />
Life-changing guidance, as implied too in the OECD description of career<br />
guidance, requires the careers adviser to have considerable underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
of the individual person, <strong>and</strong> to support self-reflection undertaken by the<br />
individual. At one level, underst<strong>and</strong>ing relies on the skill to unpick the ʻrealʼ<br />
need that underpins the presenting problem. At another level, it is ability to<br />
underst<strong>and</strong> both the presenting <strong>and</strong> the underlying needs within the<br />
circumstances of the life of that individual.<br />
Considerable literature examines the impact on employment choices of the<br />
social circumstances of the individual (Bates, 1993; Evans, 2002; Roberts,<br />
1971, 2009; Willis, 1977). Most of such work relates to the transitional period,<br />
often quite lengthy, between the end of statutory education <strong>and</strong> full adulthood<br />
(roughly the ages from 16 to 25 years). Within growing sociological literature<br />
on older people, comparable examination of disengagement from, as opposed<br />
to entry to, the workforce largely confines itself to issues of finance <strong>and</strong> (ill)<br />
( 39 ) The late Geoff Ford, a pioneer in promoting the career development needs of older people,<br />
undertook many related studies. Particular reference here is to Am I still needed?ʼ (Ford, 2005).