The University of Salford have published insight in to the ‘hidden’ young people in their region. This research look at the experiences of ‘hidden young people’ – i.e. those young people who are not in employment, education or training and who are also not claiming the benefits they are entitled to.
The report has done good work in exploring the experiences for young people directly and the perspectives from providers in the region too.
Download the research hereRecommendations:
- Count and recognise the issue
- Inform young people and their families about their rights to support through the benefit system
- Review the adequacy of current provision for young unemployed people
- Ensure support is available to young people who do not claim benefits
- Ensure young people and their families are aware of local support services
- Recognise the role of different organisations to engage young people through extensive outreach
- Support local community organisations
- Encourage ‘youth friendly’ employment practices
The emerging insights to those ‘hidden’ from the figures is still in its infancy, we have explored the ‘problems’ with the data available in our APPG report. We know from our recent Youth Voice Census that young people do not always think the services available to them will help them and that they do need feel targeted to them.
We have to better engage young people in to the conversation to ensure we are designing services for all of those who need them, this becomes difficult when there isn’t an standard way to measure the numbers and views of these young people. This report makes some important recommendations on how we can move forward including the first step of working out how we can better measure and track what young people are getting access, measuring those who are unemployed and not claiming benefits.
