Assessing the Benefits of Career Guidance

Assessing, and optimising, the benefits of career guidance has become increasingly important for a number of reasons. One is that the top-level process of Comprehensive Spending Reviews, and Public Service Agreements, through which HM Treasury funds public services increasingly requires that the benefits which specific public services provide can be quantified, in order to justify their funding. Another is that ensuring best value in the management of public funds, and in the development of evidence-based practice, requires evidence to exist on the extent to which different forms of service provision do provide benefits to their recipients. A
third is that the setting of optimal quality standards for the provision of career guidance by individual providers requires judgements to be made on the levels of service quality which maximise its benefits net of costs. A
fourth is that the process of performance review, and monitoring the extent to which individual service providers do achieve best value, requires suitable quantitative performance indicators to be available that can reflect
the benefits which recipients derive from the service provided. This paper examines the development of an analytical framework for assessing the benefits of career guidance, including quality of life improvements and
wider social benefits, and associated information requirements.