Equal-Works ezine - June 2008
Equal-Works.com is a searchable web site offering easy access to the products, processes and good practice developed under the ESF Equal programme in Great Britain. Although Equal Development Partnerships have ceased operation, Equal-Works continues to track the outcomes, achievements and lessons learnt.
This electronic newsletter highlights some of the thousands of enlightening resources available on the site.
Editorial: The NEETs and the Rest
In the 1970s and 1980s the Germans, the Dutch and Danes called them ‘the Rest Group’. They were the young people who were left after you’d counted the ones in schools, colleges, apprenticeships, universities and jobs. They weren’t even in the statistics.
But anyone in education or training, and many politicians, would tell you they amounted to about 10% - some claimed as much as 20% - of the 16-24 cohort.
Now we call them NEETs (not in employment, education or training), at least until someone comes up with another tag or acronym.
We do count them now - in the UK they’re officially around 11% of the cohort. Something over a million.
A 2007 Prince’s Trust report called them a ‘lost generation’ that had grown by 15% since 1997. Apparently their numbers have recently fallen marginally and there’s a target to bring the total down by two percentage points (presumably about 200,000) by 2010.
This waste of potential, and its associated costs in benefits, social damage and support, are huge. Some estimate them at £3.65bn a year.
Take or leave the estimates, it’s blindingly obvious that each of those lives, underpowered by limited choice and negligible resources, is a costly tragedy. More tragic still, if you reflect on how many of today’s NEETs are surely the sons and daughters of those 1970s and 1980s ‘Rest Group’ members. Poverty is usually hereditary.
And the solution?
The Government’s raising the effective school leaving age to 18 by 2013. There are bags of schemes and initiatives.
But what matters in the end is getting two groups of people to learn.
First, each and every NEET needs to be helped, cajoled and encouraged towards the system that offers the rest of us pretty decent jobs and independent lives.
Second, and at the same time, policymakers and social strategists need to learn from what’s been proven to work in programmes like Equal.
And that’s this e-zine – a quick tour of some of Equal partnerships’ smart work on one of our toughest problems: convincing NEETs that they have a value, not just a cost.
Fire-fighting NEETs
We spend a stack of time and effort creating new organisations and structures but often there’s no need. The means of engaging the hard-to-reach is already there, and just needs wider application.
In Cheshire, the Prison Service has got together with the Fire and Rescue Service to attract ex-offenders, people with a history of drug misuse and others in obvious danger of getting stuck in the NEET group, into the fire cadets.
The programme was nominated for a 2006 Criminal Justice Award for its training opportunitiess that included the BTEC National Certificate in Fire Fighting, Community Sports Leader Award, Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award, Literacy, Numeracy, IT and Citizenship NVQs as well as fire fighting training and community service experience.
Click here to find out more about IMPACT Asset partnership.
ASDA comes up for Ayr
Planning and co-operation between employers and colleges can reduce the NEET count, too.
Ayr College, one of the partners in the Scottish Equal Employability partnership, has been working with ASDA in Girvan.
When a new store was given planning permission in 2005, the recruitment process started. There was a big local skills gap and 125 jobs to fill. Hence the jointly-run Pre-employability Retail Course – 6 weeks/16 hours a week.
For those who completed it, it was followed by recruitment support sessions.
The result: 24% of the 125 jobs went to the unemployed.
Click here to find out more about Equal Employablity partnership.
First Footings
How many young people just drift into the NEET group through lack of focus and lack of knowledge? We don’t know, but as Equal partnerships worked more closely with these people their assumptions about them were often challenged.
Equal Brighton and Hove launched a range of projects. One of these, First Footings, was providing pre-employment training to help young people get into the construction industry.
They were pretty pleased when 47% completed the college-based course which offered a range of support from literacy and numeracy to a detailed introduction to the industry. They were surprised at how many had already been on courses but had dropped out of them. And they were a bit shocked at the unrealistic assumption that many made that in due course some kind of apprenticeship would be offered to them.
Click here to find out more about Equal Brighton and Hove partnership.
Three sides of ECUBE - 1
One group that is particularly vulnerable to getting stuck in the NEET category is young African-Caribbean men. In many areas they are more than twice as likely to end up unemployed as their white counterparts. WHIZ Inspire – part of ECUBE (Engagement, Empowerment, Employment) in Manchester – challenged the perceived and experienced barriers some young Afro-Caribbean males have around employment, education and training.
One of its case studies of a long-term client shows how progress can be slow, but effective.
‘One of the young men that was involved in the project has been attending the project for the past six years. Within that time he has attended our daytime provision for young people excluded from school. When he came to us he was an extremely angry young person and had little self esteem - the fact that he is dyslexic and dyspraxic with little support from the school did not help his motivation for his future.
By the time this young man came to INSPIRE he had attended college for a short while and worked for his uncle. Within the project he developed good relationships with the workers and young people and we saw a marked increase in his self esteem and motivation. His input within the sessions showed how his experiences in school and college had limited his expectation of himself as a young Afro-Caribbean male. This young man now has a college place to do Computer Engineering, and is very focused in carrying out work within the project either as a volunteer or as a workshop leader.’
Three sides of ECUBE – 2
Another ECUBE project, ALERT, has more messages about successful marketing of learning for NEETs, and about keeping them involved.
ALERT has been focused on IT training and works with NEETs of all ages. Its two main findings:
meeting people face to face through general community engagement activities, preferably nothing directly to do with employment, are a better means of recruitment to learning than general marketing;
far fewer people drop out of courses if time and effort are devoted to making them feel comfortable, and giving them some sense of ownership, at the start.
Nothing surprising there. But how often are these simple, human approaches forgotten or disregarded?
Three sides of ECUBE – 3
And take a look at the video interviews with Barry Anderson and Mubashir 'Ali' Hussain, two ECUBE beneficiaries from the ExCell project that provided employment, training and placement opportunities for ex-offenders.
Links:
Family no-businesses
Worklessness often runs in families. The arts open a gateway to learning, and to learning about work.
That’s what APE - Arts Participation for Employability partnership run by Warwickshire’s Youth Offending Team has been all about: embedding arts-based activities within its community rehabilitation activities.
Take a look at it, among other smart features, on the Workless Households page of the Youth Offending Team’s web site.
Click here to find out more about APE partnership.
What makes the difference?
The answer is mostly…… love. That’s if you listen to the young people talking about their lives in and out of care. It’s all part of the What Makes the Difference partnership that was getting to grips with the roots of the poor education, training and employment outcomes that hold back many young people who have been in care. Take a look at the video.
Click here to find out more about What makes the difference.
Starting early
Equal beneficiaries had to be post-16, but the roots of exclusion and employment are established far earlier. So a number of partnerships have been able to spend money on work with much younger people, especially those at risk. Equal Shares for All in Wales started its employment work with 14 year olds with learning disabilities. Working 1:1 with 20 pupils it helped change awareness amongemployers, brought the pupils themselves out of their comfort zones, and created a more interactive approach to vocational profiling. Result: more realistic career choices by those at real risk of joining the NEETs.
Click here to find out more about Equal Shares for All partnership.
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This e-zine and the Equal-Works site have been produced for the European Social Fund Division and represents Tribal Education Limited’s interpretation of the Equal programme. Neither this nor the Equal-Works site should be relied upon as a statement of the ESFD's views. In entering the site you as a user are accepting these terms and conditions.
