The battle for an adequate careers guidance service for adults has been a long one. A succession of governments have been formally committed to lifelong learning, to broadening choice and diversity in education and training, and to asking individuals to take more control of (and pay more for) their education, but only in the last few years have they recognised that these all require adults to have access to advice about the implications of the choices they make. So guidance professionals were greatly cheered when the last government announced that it was to create and fund a new national Advancement and Careers Service, to offer careers advice to all adults. However, after two years of planning, and with contracts signed before the general election of 2010, the biggest step forward in careers guidance for adults for many years, took place without publicity, by a government committed to a different model: an "all age" careers service. The incoming government's strong and explicit commitment to an all-age national careers service then fell foul of the same government's ideological commitment to devolving responsibility for young people's services to headteachers.