The Careers & Enterprise Company opened up a £5m pot to help organisations working in the careers space to scale up activity. The list of awards has now been published with a helpful regional breakdown of the services.
https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/map#fund
We are pleased to see a good spread of opportunity for young people, and delighted that some of the great organisations we know to have good innovative solutions be granted the support.
I am sure though that there are lots of dissapointed organisations who could really have had an impact with the support from the fund. There are also some youth unemployment “black spots” that do not seem to have had the investment really needed to offer a service to all young people. I hope to learn more about this when I attend their conference in May.
The next phase of work from The Careers & Enteprise Company is expected to be around the Enterprise Passport and the Mentoring Service. This organisation has some rather large tasks ahead of itself and the key to its success will undoubtedly be the collaboration and partnerships it builds with the careers, educators and employer sectors.
Youth unemployment is still a major issue in the UK, with nearly 1 million young people not in full-time education, employment or training. We know that careers education and inspiration is a vital tool that helps young people to make positive next step decisions. We are keen to see The Careers & Enterprise Company with the Department for Education put some strong structural solutions in place. Careers education has been largely inadequate for too long and it is time to put the energy, resource, legislation and finance in place to secure the opportunities for young people. Youth Employment UK will continue to champion the needs of young people and their voices on this issue.
