Qualify Policy Recommendations _final

4. Recommendations for Policy Makers In this section you will find some suggestions on how to best guide and support professionals working in the field of career guidance. We hope these suggestions will provide an effective insight and help promoting the importance of career guidance for low skilled unemployed. It is essential to ensure that low skilled qualified people in Slovakia and across Europe receive more personalised and empathetic professional support and this is not possible without an effective soft-skills and up-skilling training programme for professionals. Based on the findings gathered during the project implementation, the QUALIFY partnership would like to propose the following recommendations: 1. DEVELOP LIFELONG CAREER GUIDANCE SERVICES – Career Guidance should be a lifelong ser- vice aimed at covering all target groups of population, including adults with low skills. Adults with low skills need support in identifying their training needs and in understanding what kind of train- ing is more appropriate for them. They also need advice on how to overcome the different barriers to participation in training, up-skilling and adapting to the new labour needs. This comprehensive service would improve the effectiveness in reaching out to low-skilled adults and provide them with further development opportunities and facilitate changes in career direction for those seeking to work in a different field. This can de done by: • Collecting best practices examples from services that provide this kind of holistic service such as the Sheffield Futures and community led career guidance organisations in the United Kingdom and Austria (Bildungsberatung Österreich). • Increasing resources to allocate more time and budget so that caseworkers can provide tailored assistance to each individual. • Up-skilling professionals working in the field of career guidance / professional guidance. 2. CREATE SYNERGIES AMONG RELEVANT SOCIAL PARTNERS to address some of the gaps in the provision of career guidance for adults and for supporting the labour market integration and development of common strategies. This could be done by increased networking amongst public employment services or regionally based partnerships. For example: • Career Guidance can be provided in the more informal adult and community education sector, which is often a significant provider of second chance opportunities for adults. • Other option is to provide a regionally based adult education guidance service or commu- nity based services. • Guidance services by the employer organisation – both on learning new skills and on ca- reer development., including low skilled staff. 17 qualifyproject.eu