Edinburgh Napier University

  In the UK, career guidance services are deeply involved with supporting students and young people. Their involvement with unemployed adults and jobseekers has been patchier and more limited in scope. It has often been Job Centres or agencies with DWP contracts that fulfil this function. This is, perhaps, an historical accident. It means career guidance work with unemployed adults is underdeveloped, and often not professionalised. In this article we will introduce a new way of thinking about these services. We looked at welfare-to-work from the perspective of three academic literatures that are more or less separate: labour market studies, career development and the Capability Approach. Each brings some insight but