John Denham - Adult Advancement and Careers Service

I'm excited to be here to be able to say a few words about the new adult advancement and careers service. I'll start by explaining why I think this is so important. This September -the cabinet held its first meeting outside London since the 1920s. The meeting was held in Birmingham and featured a session rather like this one and a Q&A session with the Prime Minister.

The second or third question was from a woman who was out of work and keen to go back. She said 'My problem is not skills but time. I'm a carer for my elderly mother'. She summed up the need for an advancement and careers service for adults.

My enthusiasm for and interest in this subject dates back to my time as a backbencher. I would meet constituents such as a woman who worked in the corner shop. She told me that her boss was considerate of the fact that she had kids to look after and sometimes she was 30 minutes late or had to stay home when they were ill. Talking to her, it was clear she could not conceive of another job that could accommodate these needs and so she limited her career expectations. Many constituents faced similar problems-many though not all of them women.

It's something I wrote a pamphlet about for the Fabian Society. In 'Making Work Work', I talked about wanting to deliver what I called a 'Commitment to personal advancement'. I'm lucky to be in the privileged position of now being the minister responsible for something I wrote a pamphlet about and being in a position to take action on it. Not many people get the change to do that.

Most people need some help tackle the problems that hold them back, those problems aren't limited to needing information and advice.

Because everyone deserves the best chance to get on in work and in life - but that means overcoming the barriers in their way. Those barriers are different for everyone - whether finding suitable childcare, understanding employment rights, resolving problems with housing or transport.

For some, the barriers are less obvious. Many adults who want a more secure life, better prospects for their kids, a more comfortable retirement or just a permanent job haven't yet realised how new skills can help them to achieve these things.

Getting on is not just a problem for the lower skilled or the unemployed. Most people I meet, who need help, come from a broad age range and have a broad range of ambitions. There are many specific examples - those with caring responsibilities, women seeking to return to work or change career, and agency workers whose circumstances can change from week to week.

I'd like to make a couple of points about what I think that service should provide and the sort of people it might help. For example there are 4.27million carers in Great Britain. One third are not working even though many want to do so - they report difficulty in getting information, accessing services and negotiating flexibility at work. Many have actually left or turned down a job because of caring responsibilities.

There's also lots of evidence suggesting many mothers face problems getting back to work due to caring responsibilities.

Helping both of these groups to find flexible training and employment would make a huge difference. And the positive knock on effect of giving people the opportunity to realise their aspirations, for their families and their communities is tremendous.

But it is the link between the AACS and social mobility that is perhaps most important.

People with better skills are more likely to be active citizens, to vote, and to lead happier and healthier lives. Their children are likely to do better at school and to have higher ambitions and better lives too. And as the Foresight Report acknowledged, developing skills throughout your life can promote mental wellbeing.

That's why we broadened out idea. Our work on implementing training rights such as right to request time for training or right to flexible working is as important as our work to raise demand for skills. It's important that the AACS is a part of this change in culture. It will need to work closely with people in the workplace - train to gain brokers and union learning reps will be essential partners.

So as Lord Sandy Leitch identified, we need a truly universal service that can help everyone in work, whilst also helping those without jobs to get the skills they need. This is what - together - we are creating.

The information and advice 'offer' that I want AACS to provide will include:

A personal skills diagnosis, which people can either do with an adviser or by themselves online - this is currently being tested through Jobcentre Plus in the West Midlands and other areas imminently.

Better information on how your skills fit into the labour market, and on opportunities to train through your employer.

Joint advice for employers and individuals on which training and support might be right for them and for the business; this will be facilitated through links between AACS advisers and the Train to Gain brokerage service,

Better information on what funding is available to support learning. People will also be able to access that information through their Skills Account, which will be fully integrated with the AACS.

But beyond that a better network of support will be available in areas like childcare support, housing rights or welfare benefits.

People will come to this service from different places - via Primary Care Trusts or libraries or colleges so we need to make it easy for them to navigate through the system.

Providing this service requires strong partnership working across local areas, networks which can truly deliver the vision of 'no wrong door'.

We need to create a single service, with one phone number, one website and one identity - so if you phone the helpline number, you'll get a personal diagnosis of need and get passed straight through to local services to arrange a face to face appointment if you need one.

In some ways it's about simplifying the support available to individuals in the same way that we are simplifying the system for employers. With businesses we have to work out the best way of doing training of fitting it in with how that business works from day to day. It's the same with people.

To make that happen, services must come together and work in new ways to make sure people seeking advice are seen as individuals, that all their particular needs are fully understood and that advice is provided that draws together everything they need.

The ten prototypes we are launching will test a deliberately broad range of ways in which advice from different organisations can be brought together, and they will be the core from which we develop the advancement service in full.

In Manchester for example the partnership will encompass all ten local authorities in the Greater Manchester area with a central hub working closely to provide networks of advice agencies.

The prototypes will also explore how the voluntary and community sector can contribute.

So in Merseyside the prototype will be based around a voluntary sector-led network of advisory services across the six boroughs. They will use "advancement advisers" embedded in communities who act as sources of advice on wider barriers to learning.

And in South Hampshire the aim is to give clients the shortest route to as wide as possible a range of advice and help. They develop a network of "advancement aware staff" through a satellite network within libraries, housing offices, healthy living centres, community centres, probation offices and other organisations.

In the Black Country and in Brent and Ealing advisers will work with and through housing associations and Registered Social Landlords to reach clients.

Brighton and Hove, South Hampshire and Slough will be in one of the two regions trialling the integration of the Skills Accounts that I mentioned earlier.

As part of those trials, later releases of the Skills Account will be able to join up with the Apprenticeships Vacancy Matching Service. This means people looking at taking up Apprenticeships through their Skills Account will be able to generate a voucher that includes the value of their credit.

Our commitment is to learn together from these experiences. I expect to learn lessons myself about how best to create this new service. I recognise those lessons might be different in different communities.

I don't expect that we will work through this process and find that we just need an agency that offers advice on training. A 'one size fits all' organisation that provides information on where and when courses are available. It needs to be much more than that.

I don't see them as pilots that don't change for 2 years - I want you to share your experiences of what works and what doesn't. And I expect though that out of the prototypes some best practice will emerge and we will have a better understanding of how to build a strong, flexible and innovative careers and advancement service.

All of the developments I have described are enormously exciting. I'd like to talk a little about the economic climate in which we find ourselves.

Past experience has shown us that now is not the time to lose our focus on skills. Businesses that don't invest in talent are more likely to fail whereas those that carry on training will recover more quickly.

I recognise that many people are worried about being made redundant and being unable to find another job.

So today I also want to send a strong message that no-one who fears being made or is made redundant will be left without support.

My department and Tony McNulty's will work together with other Government departments on this.

In the case of my department, I will take two further measures to ensure that advice and support on skills is available.

First, the Careers Advice Service - originally set up by Learndirect will be able to offer one-to-one advice on careers, skills and retraining, and I will take further measures to promote that service.

Secondly, I will work with further education colleges to ensure that they make every effort to offer appropriate advice on and support for skills training to those who may worry about losing their jobs.

Nextstep advisers already provide, directly or through referral, wide-ranging advice for those facing redundancy and have done so on a tailored basis for large scale redundancies in the past (the Rover group, for example).

This service will still be available for companies that need it and James Purnell/DWP and I will look of every aspect of that service to ensure that it can help respond to the current climate.

The three year £100m package of European social fund money that I announced with James Purnell recently will offer much needed help to people who lose their jobs.

You are starting this work against a background of challenging circumstances. You have the opportunity to make a difference to many people's lives. In some ways it's a shame we don't have this service right now as it could be enormously helpful.

We are committed to creating a truly radical adult advancement and careers service and we're backing this with sound investment - an additional £50m by 2010-11.

But this is not something designed to be imposed from above, from Whitehall - this is your chance to shape it from the ground up.

The prospectus we're launching today represents a golden opportunity to help people and change the way public services work. Today's event is a chance to innovate. To meet other people who, like you, will play a key role in creating a new national service. Thank you.