How to build trust with a low-educated client and ensure socially just career guidance?

In this post Ly Kubenko (Career Counsellor from the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund) introduces a new card-based activity that she and her group developed at the recent summer school on career guidance and social justice, that was held in Lillehammer.

Ly Kubenko

In August 2023, I attended  a summer school for career guidance and social justice organised by the Lillehammer University of Applied Sciences in Norway. The course was attended by career guidance practitioners and students from seven different countries: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland and the Netherlands.

On the first day of the course, we were divided into smaller groups, and we were given the task of creating an exercise or resource by the end of the course that will benefit other career practitioners to enhance social justice in career guidance. In this article I will share the resource that we created with you.

Developing the resource

While looking for an idea to create a resource in our group, we discovered that in addition to me (Ly Kubenko, Career Counsellor of Estonian Unemployment Insurance Found), Carrolina also advises people without an education. With us were Kristijana from Iceland and Kim from Denmark. We found a common topic that spoke to us and chose people without primary or secondary education as our target audience.

In my experience as a counsellor I have noticed that people without primary or secondary education are often more socially disadvantaged than those who have completed primary or secondary education, not to mention those with vocational or higher education. What are the real reasons for the disruption of a person’s educational path? A large part of society does not bother to think about this issue, and the individuals are labelled and abandoned by the system, which often leads them to lose faith in society and the system. The saddest side is that people who are treated unfairly by the system and society often have low self-esteem and tend to see obstacles every step of the way, instead of finding strengths in themselves and finding ways to make them work to their advantage.

It was these personal experiences of career counselling that inspired my group and I to create an approach that would support the career counsellor in establishing contact and trust with a lower-educated client at the beginning of the counselling process. Secondly, we were convinced that the approach we created will help the individual to regain faith in himself or herself, increase self-esteem and self-efficacy for better coping in society, and gradually restore faith in the system. Thirdly, by creating our own way of going, we wanted to contribute to narrowing the gap between theoretical ideals and practices. Fourth, we found that this approach helps to increase the career counsellor ‘s critical thinking about himself or herself as a counsellor in order to ensure that the client has a socially fair counselling process regardless of his or her gender, race, ethnic background, religion, education, sexual orientation, mental or physical disability, or migrant background.

Linking theory and practice in creating an approach to the client

We asked ourselves the question: “How to can we gain trust with the client so that he opens himself up and cooperates?” In search of an answer to this question, we dived into career theories, discussed and argued, and finally came to a consensus that Savickas’ narrative theories offer a good way to establish contact and trust with the client. By letting the client think about his own favorite character or the person he admires, highlighting his strengths, the client does not need to immediately talk about himself, and this can turn out to be a key factor in achieving cooperation.

When pointing out strengths, we initially got stuck in the question: “What if the client does not know how to point out strengths?”.  It is quite common that people with a lower education are not used to seeing good qualities or strengths in themselves, which can cause difficulties in naming good qualities even in their favourite character. In search of an answer to this question, we took the Viacharacter strengths test as a basis and created strengths cards that can be used to help a career counsellor in such situations.

Strengths cardsDownload

We also based the client approach on the framework shared in the summer school, which can be used to establish contact and trust at the beginning of the counselling process. The four approaches to the client that Kosonen offers in the summary of his study: a moral educational approach, a holistic caring approach, a pragmatic collaborative approach, and a socio-critical approach reassured me as a practitioner, each client must be approached individually, taking into account the client’s background, their story, current situation and opportunities, and that the career counsellor has the choice to combine different approaches based on the client’s situation. The whole team was of the same opinion.

The five signposts framework, developed by Hooley, Sultana and Thomsen encouraged the career counsellor to work with their client to increase their critical consciousness, name oppression, question what is normal, collaborate with others and work at different levels. When building a trustworthy relationship with a client, this framework makes practitioners critically analyze themselves as an advisor and ask themselves if they can be objective with each client regardless of their background, situation, and accept the client as they are.

We were also influenced by the work of Miika Kekki who argues that as a counsellor it is important to analyse your strengths and bottlenecks, think about what to avoid and what the consequences of your behaviour are. By maintaining critical thinking as a career counsellor, choosing the appropriate approach for each client taking into account their specifics, accepting the client and their situation, we are convinced that the exercise we have created to approach the client in this way will help the career counsellor to establish contact and trust with the client and ensure socially just career guidance.

You are welcome to download our cards (see above) and use them in your practice.

For further information see our presentation from the summer school.

Social justice: Establishing relationships using storytelling and strengths cardsDownload