Postmodernism...modernism...darkages!

We were asked quite an interesting qu in class the other day…which practices would we be drawn to in our own practice??? I think that it’s a bit early on to answer this due to really a lack of experience with practice! But I do quite like the idea of the contemporary approaches particularly narrative approaches. However whether as practitioners we will be allowed to use all the knowledge that we have on new practices is another question. In my experience on placement time seems to be quite a precious commodity and realistically practitioners don’t get the time that they need to be able to practice innovative approaches like this. Whilst on my second placement in career Scotland just there, speaking to a few advisors many said that they didn’t like the cpj or using action plans with the clients. When asking them if they would use the new approaches they said that time and space constraints would make it v hard…and whilst sitting on a team meeting there was talk of auditing to make sure that everyone was using the cpj and action plan!
I think that narrative would be a good way to deal with many clients; a lot of interviews I witnessed were very much the practitioner doing ALL of the talking and the clients sitting looking a bit bored at times! Then promising to go out and stick to what they’d been told! I think this type of guidance is v much stuck in the ‘dark ages’ and not really meeting the needs of our clients, sometimes silence can be awkward and it is v tempting to talk and fill the space, but I think a little nudge and clients will eventually open up, when the said advisor left the room, the one who’d been doing all the talking that is, I asked the girl what she was interested in and she told me painting and decorating but that It was a mans job, before this we had sat for half an hour with the advisor telling her about px2- the career Scotland’s new go for it, since the careers advisor had established from the notes on the screen that the girl had no motivation and didn’t know what she wanted to do! The girl told me when the Ca left that all she had ever wanted to do was painting and decorating but that she didn’t like telling people because its not really something girls do!
I think that this is an example of how Career Scotland fails their clients to be honest, the girl was judged before she came in the door from others notes, and although of course prob keeping a file on clients has its uses, one of them shouldn’t be to pre judge!
clients what ever their past should get a chance to tell their story i think, even using things like life space drawing could get some clients slighlty reluctant... like the girl in this interview who the career advisor was adamanet was so shy that she had to do all the talking...to open up in a way personal to them.
i think what a lot of people need is just really to clarify their thoughts and organinse them, obviously client groups ave to be taken into consideration, as some clients are just physically not able to do this, but for those who are i think that its a worth while excersise!
its hard to say that we are in a postmodern era when a lot of us have a long way to go till we even reach the modern one!!