A year of change and a year of challenge, is probably how best to sum up one of the most memorable 12 month periods in the life of Careers Wales Gwent.

It was a time of expansion, as our staff increased by more than 20% in order to extend our service to adults as well as young people - providing a valuable lifelong chain of support.

This major change in our structure was immediately put to the test as we faced up to the huge support requirements of workers being made redundant by Corus at Ebbw Vale and Llanwern.

This unprecedented exercise not only made us keenly aware of the importance of continuous training for our own staff, but also of the importance of strong relationships with partner organisations such as ELWa, Job Centre Plus and the WDA, whose roles overlap heavily with ours.

The expanded service gave us the flexibility to respond to this crisis and bring vital support to local people at a crucial time in their lives.

We have also strengthened our ability to give the highest level of response both in emergencies and routine operations, by undertaking our most extensive staff training programme to date. This is something which will continue relentlessly as we aim to provide an increasingly effective service to clients at all ages.

We greatly value our growing links with local employers. Almost 3,000 of them provided work placements to a total of 8,600 young people during the year. Many of these placements were into new kinds of jobs which reflect the changing economy and allowed pupils to sample some cutting edge career options.

Hundreds of employers also give their time either as mentors or entrepreneurial role models to help young people understand the world of work in general and the role of enterprise in particular.

These links with industry open up a wide range of cross-over opportunities which enable us to expand our service to both young people and adults as well as benefiting the businesses themselves.

To give added support to young people around the time they leave school we further developed the Youth Gateway programme, operating out of three regional centres and designed to target those youngsters who are lacking confidence, motivation or clarity about their futures. This has been very successful, both in terms of the numbers participating and the positive outcomes.

We were particularly pleased during the past year to achieve renewal of our Government Chartermark after first securing this distinction three years ago. This followed a rigorous assessment of our operations, which recognised that we are committed to offering the highest quality service to our clients and communities.

We are very proud to receive that recognition again, and further steps are being taken to ensure we continue to improve.

During the year we also benefited from our closer ties with other careers companies in Wales through the newly branded Careers Wales structure. Apart from the advantages of sharing experiences and best practices we were also able to work together to improve communication, particularly through an enhanced range of information material for our clients of all ages.

Finally I would like to pay tribute to our board of directors - highly qualified and talented people drawn from many spheres of the economy and society - who give their time and expertise free of change.

These committed people, along with our skilled and dedicated staff, enable us to provide a service of real value to all the people of Gwent.

By Trina Neilson, Chief Executive Careers Wales Gwent