Ten years of the Offenbach Educational Guidance Network
20.01.2023
For ten years, the Offenbach Educational Counseling Network has been providing knowledge and guidance about the wide range of counseling services available in Offenbach. The common desire to make Offenbach's counseling services more transparent and to improve mutual knowledge about counseling services has been the agreed goal of the network, which currently unites around 30 counseling centers, since it was founded in 2012. The Educational Guidance Network is managed by the Education Coordination and Guidance Department of the Offenbach Adult Education Center (vhs Offenbach).
Head of vhs Offenbach Dirk Wolk-Pöhlmann: "The Educational Guidance Network Offenbach is still a place where cross-sectoral developments and trends in educational guidance are discussed and, if necessary, enriched with specialist input. This includes digital counseling, for example. Even after ten years of existence, the network is still making a contribution to ensuring the quality of advice in the city of Offenbach."
The "Lernen vor Ort" project, which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2009-2014, was a driving force and pioneer for today's Offenbach Educational Guidance Network. One field of action was educational guidance with the aim of creating transparency and orientation with regard to the services on offer and facilitating useful referrals to specialist advice through closer cooperation between advice centers. The initial impetus for founding the network was the specialist conference "Educational guidance in Offenbach" organized by "Lernen vor Ort" in 2011, at which the majority of participants spoke out in favour of closer cooperation.
Cooperation and quality agreement as a basis
As a result of the conference, "Lernen vor Ort" drew up a cooperation agreement for a new network to be established. This included objectives, principles of cooperation and agreements on network management. The participants formulated the common goal of "providing a comprehensive range of educational guidance services for those seeking advice in Offenbach and ensuring that those seeking advice receive the most suitable educational guidance service for them through agreements between the participating institutions". By signing the agreement, network partners commit to attending a meeting at least once a year, exchanging information on educational guidance services and participating in joint public relations work and quality development in educational guidance. The 2012 cooperation agreement was signed by 39 guidance centers. With the aim of "quality development", a working group from the network drew up a quality agreement in 2014 with statements on the understanding of guidance and the design of the guidance process. Both the cooperation agreement and the quality agreement are still valid today.
A look back and ahead
The fundamental objective of the network is to provide mutual information and to improve the transparency of counseling services in the city of Offenbach. This common "network core" has supported the network's work for ten years.
The first joint product, the "Guide to Counseling Centers in Offenbach", also stands for this. The guide was and is useful for the network work and promotes cooperation. Head of the Education Coordination and Advice Center Kai Seibel: "The guide is seen by those involved as a great support in their daily work. It has been published by the network since 2013 and provides information about local advice services in a handy pocket format." More than 50 advisory services have now been included. "This creates transparency for professionals in the advice centers, for multipliers and for those seeking advice themselves," continues Kai Seibel. The specialist center took over the management of the network in 2014.
The guide is regularly updated in consultation with the network and the revision is coordinated by the management. The costs of updating are shared by individual members. One challenge is to improve the sustainability and accessibility of the guide and to convert it into a digital form, such as a "digital advice map". The "Wegweiser Beratungsstellen in Offenbach" can be found at the link below.
As in all networks, the Educational Guidance Network thrives on activity and participation. The different partners in the network pose particular challenges for the management. Not everyone always looks at a topic with the same "depth of focus". The stakeholders meet this challenge by pooling information at network meetings: There is a general information block at the beginning, "What's new in the network", followed by a block with a "special topic", for example "Corona and advice". For joint quality development, information has been provided on further training opportunities for employees of advice centers and needs have been queried since the start of the network work. These include further training for administrative staff at advice centers or further training on simple language and advice. Registrations for further training courses are handled by the management. The quality agreement of the educational guidance network was also put on the agenda at an early stage of the network's work. The agreement was also intended to clarify the importance of the topic for the network partners - internally - and for the education and guidance landscape - externally. One challenge was not to compete with the partners' existing quality guidelines and to take diversity into account. This has been achieved with the quality agreement. 29 network partners (as of April 2021) have signed the agreement.
Network management and contact person:
In accordance with the cooperation agreement, the vhs Offenbach, initially represented by "Lernen vor Ort", is still responsible for network management today. When the project came to an end, the Education Coordination and Advice Unit established at the Offenbach Adult Education Center took over the management of the network. The network meets once or twice a year.