The German BeQu-Concept – now available in English

“Quality development in career guidance and counselling is an essential issue in lifelong guidance policy and systems development. Very few countries have statutory or binding quality standards and compulsory requirements for the qualification and competences of guidance and counselling professionals.

With the funding of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research the German National Guidance Forum (nfb) in collaboration with the University of Heidelberg started in 2009 an “open process of coordination for quality development in career guidance and counselling” among all relevant actors and stakeholders in the guidance field in order to build up a common understanding of quality and professionality in career guidance and to develop an integrated and comprehensive quality concept (BeQu-Concept).

The idea was to develop a quality concept in a bottom-up process by involving practitioners, providers, guidance experts and researchers, social partners and policy makers. The development included also field testing and piloting the concept in some 50 provider organisations.

The project was successfully finished in December 2014 and the results were published and disseminated. The main results and features of the BeQu-Concept are now available in English and we present them here to a wider international audience hoping that this might inspire similar developments and action in other countries.

We would also be most grateful for any feedback and comments. Further questions can be addressed to: Karen Schober (karen@schober-brinkmann.de) and Susanne Schmidtpott (schmidtpott@forum-beratung.de).

The German publication can be downloaded from the website http://www.forum-beratung.de/cms/upload/BQ/BeQu-Konzept.pdf.”