INGEUS – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0007)
Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry
Introducing Ingeus:
Ingeus was founded to help people achieve their potential. We evolved from a small Australian rehabilitation company, Work Directions, established by Thérèse Rein in 1989, and currently work on behalf of Governments in 10 countries worldwide to provide employment services to a cross-section of the population – with youth as a major client group.
Ingeus brought our unique approach to the UK in 2002, focusing on those most isolated from the labour market as a provider of the Employment Zones. Our original insight, that people with barriers to work should be supported to thrive rather than left alone to just survive, was one that quickly found success in the UK and is now mainstream in public policy. Over the past 15 years, Ingeus has built on this basic principle and created new, better ways to support people with barriers in their lives. We have used our knowledge, skills and vision and applied it to other areas of people’s lives. We now deliver services for government in areas of health, employment, youth services and justice.
Ingeus has seen first-hand that young people need diverse opportunities, support and character-building experiences to help them to realise their potential and fulfil their ambitions. When considering the increasing challenge of youth employment, our view is that formal education and training is only part of the picture. Young people also need support and investment to develop skills to be truly ready for life and employment. As a primary delivery partner for the National Citizen Service Trust, Ingeus Youth Services is providing exactly this kind of support.
We now work with over 60,000 young people aged 16 and 17 each year. Through partnerships with more than fifty youth organisations and residential providers, we enable young people to live away from home and become involved in a wide range of activities that offer a physical and intellectual challenge. The NCS programme empowers, develops character and fosters practical and social skills for young people to transition to adulthood. Participants give back to their local community through projects that they design and deliver themselves.
Challenges
1. What are the main challenges facing young people seeking employment today? How do structural factors impact youth unemployment, and how might these be addressed?
The pandemic has impacted everyone, but the effect it has had on young people cannot be overstated. While the long-term bearing of Covid-19 on the life chances of young people is not yet clear, its repercussions on young people’s prospects in the labour market and in education is rapidly becoming a cause for concern. Opportunities for casual employment or work experience have been severely impacted. Businesses who traditionally employ young people have faced economic disruption, millions of adult workers are still on furlough, and there are consequently fewer new opportunities for full time work available.
It is now well understood that the 2008 recession impacted young people most, leading to higher unemployment, lower pay and worse job prospects more than a decade later, and leaving behind long-lasting, negative impacts on mental health and wellbeing. It is vital to learn lessons from this experience and seek to address them as we emerge from the pandemic.
Schools have done incredibly well to adapt to the restrictions of Covid-19, but there is no question that remote provision has not been able to offer the same rich learning and social development experience that is normally possible, and is optimally always supplemented by additional youth programmes and services. With a year of social interaction and enriching activity missed and opportunities for work experience limited, supported development of life and social skills is vital to support young people, whether alongside further study or as they seek to enter a tough labour market.
Ingeus agrees with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) priorities for youth provision – supporting skills for life and work and supporting mental and physical wellbeing. As the UK begins to recover from the pandemic, these are critical areas where young people will need holistic support, in school and beyond, to ensure everyone has access to positive activities that meet their needs.
As the Committee may be aware, the National Citizen Service (NCS) is a Government-backed initiative that gives young people, aged between 15 and 17, the chance to undertake a programme of personal and social development and community action. It exists to engage, unite and empower young people, helping build the confidence they will need to achieve their dreams, no matter where they’re from or what their backgrounds are. Ingeus has worked with NCS since 2011, delivering life-changing experiences for young people in the South East, East Midlands, West Midlands, East Anglia and in the North East.
The NCS was founded, in part, as a response to the impact of the 2008 recession on youth unemployment. We believe that NCS remains an excellent cohesive programme to support young people at a critical point in their lives. It can and should be adapted to meet the needs of young people in the aftermath of the pandemic, and could broaden in focus to support health, mental health and wellbeing initiatives. NCS is a highly adaptable programme, that could be delivered in several different ways or tailored to meet emerging priorities. Its strengths are both national coverage and local flexibility. Through the NCS Trust it is well coordinated, through large providers it is well managed and through local delivery partners it can meet the complex and diverse needs of the young people it exists to support.
We would also like to see more long-term tracking of the effectiveness of youth services, such as through Government impact tracking to assess the proportion of young people that have been involved in specific interventions and progressed into work and further education. We are confident that such research would demonstrate the impact programmes like NCS can have.
Ingeus passionately believe that a well-funded (and evolving) NCS has a vital role to play in addressing these priorities in the coming years. NCS takes place at the critical juncture between childhood and adulthood, school and employment/further education. It is a unique moment for meaningful intervention and support.
Schools do not have time to provide the holistic, active and experiential opportunities offered by NCS, even with additional funding to help young people catch up. As the largest NCS provider, we have seen how the programme has helped thousands of young people establish a stronger sense of self and find a continuing role within their communities. NCS has a strong focus on mental health and wellbeing.
By providing a clear strategy, focused on developing skills for life and work, and supporting mental and physical wellbeing, the Government has an opportunity to play a bigger role in aligning and connecting provision for young people across departments, especially with the Department for Education, Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice. Currently, young people must navigate through various department to access funding, whereas a system in which funding follows young people throughout their lives would enhance efficiency and deliver better results. Without this, there remain too many gaps between different interventions for young people to fall through, and, combined with the lack of sufficient knowledge around all provision available, many young people miss out on getting the funding they want, need and are eligible for. A more holistic and joined-up approach by policy makers would help providers better signpost young people to other services and increase the long-term impact of DCMS sponsored interventions.
Ingeus sees value in the establishment of a nationwide commissioner or coordinator of all youth provision and believe that the NCS Trust would be well placed to take this role. With such a role, there would be an opportunity to make NCST a connecting point for broader service provision, linking to the full range of government programmes for young people.
In recent years NCS providers have suffered from a lack of clarity regarding future funding. Currently the NCS is a cyclical programme, with a summer peak of activity. If we are to be able to maintain specialist staff and sustain partnerships with specialist delivery organisations, including many in the third sector, it is vital to have clear sight of future funding. The shorter funding cycles seen in recent years have seen the sector live ‘hand to mouth’ with limited ability for proper strategic planning. Long term funding cycles would not only enable the sector to plan better, but also allow us to make investments to improve and drive greater level of sustainability.
We urge the Government to continue its commitment to NCS and to clarify multi-year funding commitment sooner rather than later this year, and would also like to see the following additional measures on funding implemented:
Primary and secondary education
5. Does the national curriculum equip young people with the right knowledge and skills to find secure jobs and careers? What changes may be needed to ensure this is the case in future?
We would like to see the Government focus on setting clear long-term strategy, policies and standards for youth support and ensuring that youth services are connected to other areas of Government provision. This would go beyond the national curriculum, to develop skills needed for life beyond school – a key aim of the NCS.
Through delivering NCS, we aim to equip young people with knowledge for later life that is not included in the National Curriculum, such as budgeting, finances and living away from home. NCS delivery is also aligned to the Gatsby benchmark which works alongside the school curriculum to additionally ensure that the programme compliments the existing education system.
Work experience provides a necessary taster to life beyond the classroom, however more needs to be done to develop young people’s core skills in later life, such as financial and household management. That’s why we are calling for further Government support for the NCS – to develop these vital skills for later life.
6. Is careers education preparing young people with the knowledge to explore the range of opportunities available? What role does work experience play in this regard?
Designed especially for 16- and 17-year olds, the NCS experience gives young people a clearer idea of what they want from their futures. It is therefore something that every young person should have the chance to do, regardless of circumstances or any additional needs they may have. NCS gives young people a chance to develop the skills crucial in today’s competitive job market, such as leadership, team building and problem solving. Seven in 10 NCS graduates feel more confident about getting a job because of NCS[1], and therefore the Government should look to enhance its support experiential learning opportunities as well as work experience programmes.
The main criticism levelled at NCS is that it is just one moment in a young person’s life. We believe that sometimes it is “moments” that really make the difference, but we also share the passion of the current leadership of the NCS Trust in ensuring impact extends beyond the programme. We would, for example, like to play a more significant role in guiding young people towards other options available to them at the end of the NCS experience, and believe that providers could play an important 1:1 mentoring role, bridging to Traineeships, Apprenticeships, Kickstart, continuing education or other government sponsored programmes.
Work experience is an important part of preparing young people for future employment, but opportunities for meaningful work experience have been disrupted by the pandemic. The NCS can help full some of this gap, though involvement in voluntary action community projects. Kickstart is another important government programme, but this currently lacks effective national coordination. Ingeus believe that the NCST and providers could play a role in identifying and promoting Kickstart and work experience opportunities, but this is not currently party of our work.
11.What lessons can be learned by current and previous youth labour market policy interventions and educational approaches, both in the UK and in other countries?
In Ingeus’ experience, securing job outcomes for young people can be achieved relatively effectively through traditional labour market interventions. For example, the UK Work Programme helped 41% of young people (aged 18-24) who accessed the provision to find work and remain in work for at least 26 weeks. This was five percentage points higher than the outcome level achieved for jobseekers aged 25 and older, demonstrating that mainstream employment provision is well-placed to help many young people. The UK Work Programme had the benefit of scale and leveraged this to maximise the range of opportunities and support available for young people. Where this scale isn’t practical, then it would seem likely that a specialist focus is preferable – such as APM’s (our parent company) Youth Employment Program in Australia, where we have helped 48% of young people to secure employment.
One thing these programs have in common is a strong “work first” approach, which is entirely appropriate for young people in a growing labour market with a good range of job opportunities available to them. Where labour market conditions are tighter, a programme that accentuates unpaid or subsidised work experience may have a role to play, as it allows employers to extend opportunities to young people when they might otherwise be unwilling to take a risk. During the Global Financial Crisis, the UK experimented with two main policy initiatives within its Young Person’s Guarantee. Of these, the Future Jobs Fund is well known and has been subject to a number of studies, which suggested it has a positive impact by providing highly subsidised job opportunities for young people.
Less well known is the Community Task Force, which identified unpaid work experience placements in voluntary and community organisations combined with employability skills training, all at a fraction of the cost of the Future Jobs Fund. It would seem appropriate for future provision to establish an comparable evidence base for both subsidised and unpaid work experience opportunities in order to inform future interventions, but what is certainly true is that for young people in particular a period of work experience is a helpful component of any labour market intervention. This is done by giving future employers’ confidence in a young person’s ability to engage and sustain in work-related activities.
12. What economic sectors present opportunities for sustainable, quality jobs for young people? How can we ensure these opportunities are capitalised on and that skills meet demand, particularly for green jobs?
At Ingeus, we believe that all sectors include opportunities for sustainable, quality jobs. This includes the gig economy, given the appeal of its flexibility for young people, who have more fluid schedules. We believe that the best route to sustainability is for someone to be engaged with, and enjoy, what they are working in, and to be equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding to do so.
13. How might future youth labour market interventions best be targeted towards particular groups, sectors or regions? Which ones should be targeted?
One way in which future youth labour market interventions can be targeted towards particular groups is through localised commissioning. This would allow local prioritisation on a location or community basis.
However, we also believe that targeting sectors works best in conjunction with subsidised work, so that employers are incentivised to take a risk but young people and providers still have a reason to look at other sectors if that would better suit the individual.
Employment programmes should remain broad and not consist of a narrow focus on specific sectors, so that young people can keep their options open rather than undertake training in a specific sector and then decide that this is not for them. Instead, providers should be incentivised to help young people find the right path for them as individuals, as this would lead to better, sustained outcomes.
6th May 2021
[1] Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute independent evaluation report, NCS, 2015