In this post Jennifer Harper and Dr Marjorie McCrory (University of the West of Scotland) explore whether counselling approaches should be used as part of career guidance with care experienced individuals.

The term ‘care experienced’ refers to anyone who is, or has been, in foster, residential or kinship care or is, or has been, looked after at home with a supervision requirement, at any point in their life.

Care experienced people often experience barriers that can hinder their access into higher education and/or employment. These barriers can include leaving secondary school earlier and with fewer qualifications, experiencing unstable accommodation or homelessness, mental health issues, a criminal record and general stigma. Circumstances under which young people become care experienced varies greatly too, including abuse, neglect, poverty and illness or death of a parent, all of which can impact their view of themselves and their possibilities.

The role of career guidance

However, trying to understand these life experiences, navigate education and make career decisions can prove difficult for many. The results of a small-scale qualitative research, conducted in March 2020 with two care experienced higher education students in Scotland, indicates that career guidance with a broader counselling approach may have a positive impact on the wellbeing and outcomes of care experienced individuals.

Conducted through in-depth interviews that explored primary, secondary and post-school relationships and career decision-making prior to entering higher education, the research highlighted that a lack of consistent support, guidance and encouragement had a detrimental impact on care experienced students’ self-belief. A lack of meaningful relationships in their early years – and relationships that actively asked about what they personally wanted or enjoyed – left the candidates with low self-esteem and a negative belief of their abilities.

Both participants in this research believe that consistent one-to-one career guidance throughout their full secondary education may have had a positive impact on their outcomes. This support would have been likely to increase their self-belief and their likelihood of staying in school and entering higher education.

It could be argued that if a broader counselling approach had been incorporated within the career guidance that they did receive in school, they would have been better equipped to prevent the limiting barriers inflicted upon them through circumstance from standing in their way.

Taking a counselling approach

Career guidance has Roger’s core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard at its heart. The research found that a more consistent and deeper counselling approach and development of the one-to-one trusted relationship has a longer lasting and more positive result for the care experienced individual (see also the evaluation of MCR pathways project for care leavers). This links with Law’s assumptions that environment (both positive and negative) can model behaviour and affect how a person sees their place in the world.

Career guidance that applies a broader counselling approach that fully explores the environmental influences on the individual’s life could help uncover the limiting barriers inflicted through circumstance. This means including home environment, factors such as distance from school if in foster/kinship care, and personal lived experiences and exploring the effect this has on their thought process and understanding at that time. By doing this it should be possible to gain a better understanding of career experienced young people and positively influence their career decision-making through the extension of their horizons for action.

Other research correlates with these findings and argues that the ability to understand their own circumstance can assist care experienced individuals to make better sense of their experiences, thus better equip them to handle key transition points throughout their life and career. Harrison’s 2019 research further indicates a need for better understanding of life experiences. It shows how more consistent support is required during school years to aid the transition into higher education, and subsequent ability to sustain the full course for care experienced students.

This raises the question whether career guidance should be incorporated within the ‘care’ system to ensure ‘career counselling’ is consistent, giving the care experienced young person opportunity to consider circumstances, understand them better and explore their full potential.