Careers Development Apprenticeship

Support young people with SEND, SEMH, and medical or mental health needs to plan their futures through high-quality careers advice and guidance. Work with families, professionals, and education settings across Somerset while completing a Level 6 Careers Guidance qualification and contributing to SPTS’s collaborative, high standards.

Main Responsibilities and Duties

• Deliver 1:1 and group careers guidance under supervision.
• Build rapport with young people with complex needs.
• Travel independently to multiple settings across the county.
• Work collaboratively with teachers, parents, and external agencies to create tailored career plans.
• Liaise with SENCOs, social workers, and external agencies.
• Maintain accurate records and contribute to destination tracking.
• Support careers events, fairs, and work experience programmes.
• Uphold safeguarding, equality, and data protection policies.
• Assist in developing resources and activities that promote career awareness and independence.
• Complete all training and assessments required for the Level 6 Careers Guidance qualification.

Apprenticeships include time away from working for specialist training. You’ll study to gain professional knowledge and skills.

Course Contents

• Reflection and self-evaluation: set and achieve targets and objectives for professional development, based on self-assessment and feedback from line-management, peers, and clients, and identify strategies to manage the effects of change on self and the development of a positive mental attitude.
• Organise and deliver activities with clearly defined and measurable learning outcomes that use and blend relevant resources, client-focused techniques, and approaches that best meet the needs of individuals and enable them to fully engage in their career development.
• Critically analyse and compare the major models of career-related curricula within the organisation, evaluate activities in relation to defined outcomes, and plan how to improve them and their own performance.
• Select, tailor, and apply theory, concepts, and effective practice relevant to the role and client base.
• Provide critical insight into the contemporary world of work and learning, and analyse the implications of these for clients.
• Explore and clarify expectations and agree the aim, purpose, and scope of the career development activities with the client.
• Build and sustain positive and constructive working relationships, resolve conflicts constructively in ways that do not undermine confidence.
• Engage and sustain relationships with employers and opportunity providers, individually or as part of organisational networks.
• Adapt activities and collaborate with other professionals to ensure that activities support and do not discriminate against clients with additional needs or who experience disadvantage.
• Prioritise the needs of all clients and workloads to provide fair and balanced provision whilst maintaining personal well-being.
• Record and analyse the outcomes of referrals so that examples of success and failure can be monitored and shared.
• Maintain appropriate records of client interaction to explain their use in helping clients to effect change and to satisfy organisational monitoring arrangements.
• Use information technology and web-based resources with confidence in the support of career development activities (digital literacy).
• Prioritise need and provide ongoing support to clients through a variety of different types of intervention and media.
• Raise client awareness of options and broaden horizons by introducing them to unfamiliar new ideas and sources of information, challenge and support them in reframing their thinking, and encouraging their career adaptability.
• Equip, empower, and encourage clients to undertake an assessment of their knowledge, skills, abilities, and characteristics.
• Apply a knowledge and understanding of theories, models, frameworks, and pedagogic approaches to support the development of an individual’s career management skills.
• Understand and make effective use of occupational information and local, regional, national, and international labour market intelligence, including its relationship to societal developments, e.g., technological trends, policy-making, potential bias, or partiality.
• Equip clients to use technology effectively in their career management (digital literacy).
• Understand and apply appropriate research strategies to obtain, interpret, and tailor information to meet the needs of clients and others, including the appropriate use of primary and secondary sources, and information technology, e.g., social media and web-based information sources.