Vol. 482 No. 3
404 Mr. P. Carey asked the Minister for Education and Science the level of counselling support available to students on VTOS and similar return to full time education courses; and whether arrangements will be made with other appropriate Departments and agencies, for example partnership companies, to expand this support service for students. [17992/97]
An evaluation of the vocational training opportunities scheme carried out by consultants some years ago identified a number of shortcomings in the adult education system that could have an adverse effect on the VTOS. These included the limited availability of the guidance and counselling service dealing with vocational and educational issues for adults in general and, more specifically, for unemployed adults and those dependent on social welfare incomes.
Among the recommendations of the report was that there should be a more widespread availability of pre-VTOS provision, including information and guidance activities.
The present position is that a number of VTOS centres are using their pay budgets to pay guidance and counselling personnel as part of VTOS staffing. Others draw on the services of a guidance counsellor from a local vocational education committee school. Where VTOS forms part of a vocational school's provision, participants are able to draw on the services of the resident regular school guidance counsellor.
Over the years since the establishment of VTOS in 1989, VTOS co-ordinators have gained guidance and counselling skills on the job as they have had to deal with a wide range of participants' personal, social and academic issues. Many have taken part-time extra-mural courses in guidance and counselling on their own initiative.
The National Centre for Guidance in education and the national co-ordinator of VTOS are currently engaged in preliminary discussions with a view to providing enhanced guidance training for VTOS personnel. The centre also plans to issue a handbook on guidance for adults with particular reference to VTOS students.
As part of the mid-term review of the use of European Union Structural Funds, a new measure for guidance counselling and psychological services for Youthreach and traveller training centres will be available in 1998.
These provisions are supplemented by initiatives on the part of such national and local employment support services as FÁS, the area-based partnerships and the local employment service.
The availability of guidance services in the adult education sector generally and the need for an enhanced and co-ordinated provision will be one of the issues to be dealt with in the forthcoming Green Paper on adult education.
