Value My Skills for Young Adult Careers, a tool from the United Kingdom, is an interactive card game designed to help young adult carers (aged approximately 16–25) to think about their current skills, future career aspirations and potential skills gaps. A set of 46 skill cards on People, Ideas, Data, Things, Practical and Emotional with instructions is included with the packs.
Cards can be used as a starting point for a discussion and for beginning working with a young person to plan the future. They are practical and useful in order to help youngsters gain confidence and recognise the wider and transferable skills they have developed as carers and in their lives as young adults, and to think about wider alternative career opportunities that they had previously been unaware of. The UnionLearn cards can invoke young adult carers to talk more openly about the pressures they face as carers and about the impact of it, regarding their confidence and career aspirations. By the end of the pilots, many participants had made progress including starting traineeships or employment, and securing job interviews or volunteering opportunities.
The applicability of the innovative tool for the development of Life Skills
Picture 2: An example of one set of Value My Skills cards, for practical skills
The tool is developed in a game format and formed to match the specific needs of the target group. The tool can be used with the help of a support worker, online, face to face and in both one-to-one and group sessions, facilitating career mentoring and support.
Despite being designed and applied mostly in the UK with young adult carers, the tool can be used with young adult carers in other countries, or tailored to support career guidance for other target groups.