Reimagining employment support: how to ensure seamless support for young people who are NEET
Reimagining employment support 1.21 MB
The government is right to acknowledge the increasing numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). However, the system isn’t well set up to help young people with the challenges they face.
Employment support must be reformed if the government is serious about helping more young people into work. At the moment, work coaches don’t have enough time to explore young people’s unique circumstances or offer meaningful employment advice. Barriers to work, including issues with debt, housing and benefits, are often left unaddressed. Instead, work coaches focus on compliance with rules.
Too often this leaves young people feeling unsupported and disempowered. They want to get into work, but are facing seemingly insurmountable hurdles.
While the introduction of Youth Hubs is a welcome step, the support they offer is limited to 6 months. In addition, they often lack the integration with other local services needed to ensure that young people don’t fall between the cracks.
We propose three key steps needed for meaningful change:
Reimagine the Jobcentre structure to provide more holistic, tailored support. Split the work coach role into two: case workers and careers advisers, to better target support. Bring benefit advice in-house to help young people tackle the practical and financial barriers they face to work.
Change conditionality to better reflect workplace practices and encourage positive working relationships. Introduce a mutual ‘support plan’, tailored to the individual. Where a young person refuses to engage, apply a Performance Improvement Plan before sanctions are considered.
Move to a hub and spoke model, connecting employment support to other local services as part of local Get Britain Working plans. Jobcentres should work with Youth Hubs, the local authority and other co-located services to offer joined-up, proactive support to young people. Co-located services must be accessible, prioritise warm handovers through direct referrals and put data sharing agreements in place.
These reforms would not require significant costs, but would help tackle many of the barriers young people face to engaging with support services.