Hi Reiltin,
I guess I'd look at what services I could provide, to whom, what the supplier saturation was for the area I was able to work within, what I wanted to earn, how many hours, my qualifications and experience in comparison to other suppliers...and how many consultancies in my area needed freelance support.
I am both a Careers Guidance Practitioner (for young people- fully qualified) and a Freelance Outplacement Consultant for consultancies offering careers support (post redundancy) to their clients- I have worked for 15 years on and off providing such support.
So my advice would be!
Ensure you/your mum get psychometric qualifications Level A and B - from a supplier approved by the British Psychological Society. You will need these to help clients to self-evaluate and understand their learning/training needs - i.e. potential psychological issues and barriers to achieving promotion or further roles. You are not allowed to administer or interpret them (allegedly!) without these qualifications. I have them and they have been fantastic for other things such as offering to run psychometric testing (ability and personality) for employment agencies- I spent many happy years doing this. Great bread and butter work.
You will need to get on the freelance books of consultancies that offer careers services - usually Outplacement services - to gain bread and butter work- see names far below.
Not wishing to be negative, but the general public does not always wish to pay for careers support - they turn to discrete colleagues, professional friends, use the internet, CAB for employment issues etc. I only ever gained private individuals through direct personal recommendations and word of mouth - never, ever from advertising or editorial unfortunately- despite trying! Adult career changers or those wishing to affirm their career or review it make up a really tiny proportion of my work- not enough to sustain a business. Also the National Careers Service offers free 1:1 sessions to adults nationally- so you have a major free competitive offer to battle against. These sessions are run by fully qualified Careers Consultants.
Today, my careers workload is mainly working on behalf of youth careers agencies in schools, on a day rate (a very bad one!) and private sessions for young people which I charge at rates similar to maths tutoring.
I wouldn't however recommend getting into youth careers as an extra service provision to offer (sorry). This is as many Careers Advisers have been made redundant since 2011 and worse - it is unbelievably badly paid. You also now need a Level 6 (degree) preferably Level 7 (Postgrad) in Careers Guidance and the CDI's QCG.. AND preferably to be on the professional register of the Career Development Institute. All for the princely sum of around a £22K full-time salary.
Does your mum have a masters in Careers Guidance - if so, she will be well placed to provide careers interviewing, diagnostics and job search strategy setting and support during implementation- these are things the consultancies look for. Consultancies include Capita, Right Management, Penna Consulting, Reed Transitions- there are many more. You do the work, send in invoices and like as not, they'll use an external practise to administer payments - these remove tax at source.
Hope the above helps. x
p.s a good one to consider is working freelance as a careers consultant to those leaving the army - I believe Capita may have won the contract nationally to provide 'outplacement' services - it was with Right Mgmt for many years.