The careers guidance landscape has become more complex in general in recent years. Schools must arrange careers guidance for their students, although they are not obliged to deliver it themselves.

The state plays a lesser part in general in provision, with more third sector and social enterprise organisations playing a role. Unionlearn is keen to support work to ensure that good careers guidance is available to all and, in particular, to young people.

Earlier this year, my colleague Matthew Creagh wrote a blog piece on this issue and on the work the TUC has been doing with UNISON and the NUS around the issue.

I have recently been working with What Could I Be – a social enterprise that produces printed careers information i-ZINES for children and parents. Resembling a newspaper at first glance, the i-ZINES aim to encourage discussion between children and parents about jobs and careers by showing how sectors and skills inter-connect offering lots of opportunities for training and work.

Each issue focuses on a theme, region and school year/key stage and is designed to inform as much about the context in which jobs exist as about the jobs themselves.

What Could I Be contacted unionlearn because they knew that, through our trade union contacts, we had access to workplaces – a great source parents, grandparents and other guardians – through which they could find people to help distribute the i-ZINES to children.

This meant that, not only would young people see them, but the older people caring for them would do so too, giving them more of an insight into the world of work beyond their own workplaces and into what young people now need to know to help them with their future careers.

A recent i-ZINE on "Law and Society" for the Yorkshire and Humberside region looks at a range of settings for work such as the courts system, international organisations, National Parks and other public spaces, police and armed forces, recycling, data creation, cyber security and volunteering. I recently distributed 2,000 copies through the GMB and Unite in Yorkshire so that they could get them out to workplaces with the aim of ensuring these get to young people through this route.

Whilst we fully support the idea of face to face guidance, we also appreciate the value of resources in different formats (audio visual, written or online for example) that can be accessed and returned to more than once and/or kept for future reference. In this way, young people can quickly access useful information, contacts, ideas and inspiration that will be of great value as they plan their further education, training and employment.