Many young people who have had bad experiences of education or training in the past do not respond well to exam situations or anything that reminds them of school. Their bad experiences can be due to a range of problems from learning difficulties and disability, through emotional and behavioural problems often linked to family breakdown and trauma, through to language barriers and cultural problems. Workforce has developed a specialist method of working with disaffected young people to ascertain their skills and offer them a pathway to gaining skills, qualifications and employment, without alienating them further. This method is client centred assessment and guidance that does not set young people tests to enter training but instead aims to ascertain the clients' needs and then to find training that meets those needs. Assessments are made in an informal environment with assistance available and no time limits to enable the clients to display their skills and staff to find out where difficulties lie.
Some assessments are written, others are verbal, practical or IT based.
Guidance about what training is available and appropriate is delivered through the same service so guidance is much better informed and assessment more relevant. With the client centred model, clients get to discover their own strengths and weaknesses and determine the best way of overcoming their obstacles, gaining qualifications and skills and entering work. By making this commitment, they make their first step towards reintegration into education, training and employment. Workforce provides assessment and guidance to more than 2000 clients a year and has been developing this method of work since 1994 when it won a national award to develop better ways of working with disaffected young people. Since 1997 it has worked with partners in Ireland and Italy to produce a handbook of good practice.