Local approach 'essential to help jobless youth'

2 Jul 13
Local government leaders have repeated calls for powers to tackle youth unemployment after a survey revealed that jobless young people had little faith in the government’s national approach.

By Richard Johnstone in Manchester | 3 July 2013

Local government leaders have repeated calls for powers to tackle youth unemployment after a survey revealed that jobless young people had little faith in the government’s national approach.

In a Local Government Association poll of 1,000 out-of-work16 to 24-year-olds, almost 60% said they were not getting enough support from Department for Work and Pensions schemes, such as the flagship Work Programme. Only a quarter of those polled (26%) said the government had the ‘right approach’ to help them find work. Just 28% of those who had been out of work for more than six months were optimistic that they would soon find a job. Exactly half of those questioned said existing public sector services such as Jobcentre Plus did not ‘understand or support’ their personal circumstances.

According to the poll, around 46% of young people found the Work Programme ‘not at all useful’ or ‘not very useful’. This rose to 50% for jobcentres, and is a higher level of discontent than recorded for recruitment websites or support from charities.

The LGA said the ‘growing dissatisfaction’ with existing central government services, across as many as 25 different national schemes, meant there was an ‘essential need for a new local approach to tackling long-term youth unemployment’.

In February, a LGA report found that a local approach could cut youth unemployment by 20% in three years and save £1.25bn for the taxpayer.

As part of its Rewiring public services campaign launched yesterday, the group is reiterating the call for councils to be given more responsibility for back-to-work and training services.

Peter Box, chair of the LGA’s economy and transport board, said the survey showed that ‘nationally driven attempts to tackle youth unemployment are not working for our hardest-to-reach young people’.

He added: ‘They firmly echo the frustration felt by councils who find their efforts to help them find jobs being hampered by a complex set of centralised schemes that fail to meet their needs or the demands of local employers.

‘Councils are in a unique position to play a pivotal role in identifying young people who are likely to slip into periods of long-term unemployment. We desperately need to be given the powers to prevent this from happening and help equip future jobseekers with the skills, confidence and real-life experience they need to find work.’

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