Unheard: the voice of users in the development of quality in career guidance services

Abstract

The centrality of the users as partners in quality development is highlighted in official documents on career guidance, such as the EU Resolutions on Lifelong Guidance from 2004 and 2008. In addition, increased numbers of scholars in the field of organisational development and public service innovation highlight the importance of user participation as key in building stronger and more relevant services. Thus, policy rhetoric and research-based knowledge point in this direction: the main person in guidance interventions is the user, and the user should be involved. With this backdrop, it would seem evident that the voice of users was taken seriously in the planning, in the selection of methods and in the practical ways of offering guidance. Nordic research, however, shows that there is quite a gap between the rhetoric and realities when it comes to the systemic involvement of users in designing and offering guidance, even in the Nordic countries where democracy and active citizenship are so deeply rooted. This situation reveals some aspects of the uneasy relationship between individual and society.