CHIMERA CONSULTING – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0041)

Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry

 

1. Introduction:

1.1 I run a sole trader economic development consultancy business, specialising in research and evaluation, and am submitting this paper to the House of Lords Youth Unemployment Committee in a professional capacity – having reviewed many projects and programmes across England designed to help young people towards and into work.

1.2 My experience specifically comes from evaluating the impact of nine projects over 2017-2020 supporting young people “furthest from the labour market”, facing complex and multiple challenges and barriers to accessing work, and those “on the margins of society”.

1.3 The combined array of assignments involved extensive primary research: I interviewed 265 young people, 141 frontline delivery staff, 82 representatives of organisations at a strategic level and 29 employers and covers projects in the South East, East and West Midlands, East Anglia and North East of England. My work included evaluating 7 of the 21 “Talent Match” programmes funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and other initiatives funded by a combination of UK Government (City Deal) and EU (European Social Fund) resources. Feedback from young people provided a wealth of information (and case studies) to explain how the support they received had changed their lives and what aspects of services and support they accessed had been most appreciated, in comparison to other forms of more “mainstream” support they had accessed.

1.4 I gave a presentation on these findings to illustrate “what works and why?” and explain key success factors in youth employability programmes, to the International Economic Development Council’s annual conference in Dallas (October 2020, held in a virtual format). I have also founded a “Youth Employment Network” for practitioners operating in the youth employment and skills arena - a peer learning network, which I run on a voluntary basis with another freelance consultant, under a banner called “The Learning Lab”.

1.5 Based upon my experience and the evidence gathered from my primary research and evaluation work, I have limited my responses entirely to Question 11 which I feel best placed to provide some input to the Committee. I would be happy to answer further questions and provide additional materials should this be required.

 

 

 

2. Response

Ref Question 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?”

2.1 I would suggest that for some young people, their first steps out of the school, college of university environment and into looking for work can be daunting. The majority of young people can “find their way” into the jobs market and take their first steps onto their career ladder with some advice and guidance from family, school, university or other agencies providing some support and a steer. Others need a lot more help. They may have negative associations of their formal education (for a variety of reasons), they may be struggling to identify what career path or job options to consider, and they may be lacking a direction in their lives and / or be experiencing a number of personal challenges and difficulties which are weighing down upon them. It is these young people who I have observed and interviewed who have welcomed a new approach to being supported that puts them and their needs at the centre of the model. By providing bespoke “wraparound” support and with a dedicated “coach” or “mentor” to act as their consistent guide along their journey towards and into work, some young people’s lives can be transformed for the better.

2.2 UK Labour Market Policy has, in my experience, tended towards programme-led approaches to supporting the supply side: funding programmes (typically domestic UK Government and European Social Fund resources etc.) have, in the main, encouraged the provision of a plethora of projects and programmes that have been time-limited and often driven by output targets (which tends to provide an incentive for skills/training providers to select the “low hanging fruit” to enrol on these programmes) rather than to support individual young people in a more rounded and holistic fashion. Young people I spoke to in the course of my evaluation assignment typically said “I was told to go on this [short-term] course” which they didn’t enjoy, didn’t feel encouraged by and quite often, wouldn’t see the course through to completion. Then may then get referred onto another short-term course and this merry-go-round would continue without anyone picking them up when they fell between the gaps.

2.3 The National Lottery Community Fund’s 5 year “Talent Match” programme took a very different approach to break this cycle of failure and put young people at the heart of the process. Both in terms of encouraging young people to be involved in project design and service commissioning but also as recipient of support – with a more tailored approach based on their needs, aspirations and providing services they could access as part of their personalised action plans. The one consistent measure adopted by all seven of the 21 Talent Match programmes I evaluated, was that they recruited frontline coaches (or mentors) who would providing a “hand holding” supportive service to each young person throughout their journey, whether they needed a couple of weeks of support or 18 months of support. This was a critical success factor I observed across these programmes and young people felt valued, supported, encouraged and made significant progress knowing their coach/mentor was with them for the journey.

The typical model included these features:

 

2.4 I identified eight key success factors from these programmes which I would summarise as:

2.5 More details on these are available, should this be helpful to the Committee and a video presentation I made to the International Economic Development Councils annual conference in (virtual) Dallas, October 2020, is available on my website ( www.chimeraconsulting.com ) and on YouTube.

 

 

10th May 2021