4A: How to achieve success in guidance and support

Successful providers ensure that the support and guidance they offer customers is effective by having:

• a good knowledge and understanding of the customer group in terms of their skills and experience
• a good knowledge and understanding of the local labour market employers’ needs and any local mismatch between skills on offer and those required
• the ability to adapt learning programmes to changes in recruitment patterns of customers. Demographic changes and the arrival of new populations mean not only changes in the skills offered by local people but also changes in the type of support and guidance they will require
• membership of local IAG partnerships and the ability to call upon experts to provide appropriate careers advice and guidance
• a resource bank of local specialist organisations to which customers can be referred for specific support such as counselling benefits advice, help with immigration issues, drug and alcohol abuse support, housing advice and so on
• policies on supporting customers requiring help with childcare and travel
• a regular programme of customer tutorials and reviews
• good links with the human resources departments of the companies they work with the skills to negotiate with employers.

The environment in which support is offered is also important. There should be private spaces available for offering confidential interviews. For customers who are speakers of other languages, information leaflets should be available in a range of community languages, and an interpretation service should be available. Staff need to be knowledgeable about qualification equivalencies from the countries of origin of their customer group, and able to relate these to the National Qualifications Framework.

Good providers ensure that staff have counselling qualifications and training and/or qualifications in IAG in addition to their basic skills teaching qualifications and experience.