1. Are Grassroots Youth Led Pre-
employability Training
Schemes Successful At
Reducing Youth
Unemployment, Specifically
Among Young Carers?
Lewis Barclay, Peter Campbell and Alice Holden
2. Key Definitions
Young Carers: An under 25 year-old who looks
after a relative with a debilitating condition e.g.
Dementia
Pre-employment Training Schemes: provide
individuals with the skills necessary for pursuing
employment.
Soft Skills: Personality traits, such as
communication and people management skills
NEET: Not in Employment, Education or Training
3. Why Should We Answer This Question?
Lack of relevant academic literature on young
carers
Higher than average unemployment rate in the
North East of England
No definitive solutions from successive
governments
4. Why is this Question Important to us?
Reducing the unemployment rate can enormously
benefit individuals and society:
The economy
Health
Increase individual and regional prosperity
Discover what makes a successful pre-
employment scheme
Central to long term UK economic policy
5. Why Does The North East Suffer From
High Levels Of Youth Unemployment?
There are not enough jobs in the North East
Too many young people lack the necessary skills
required for employment
Employers are unwilling to hire younger people,
as they often lack experience
6. Reducing The Skills Gap
We evaluated Youth Focus' Reducing the Skills
Gap training scheme as a way to look at pre
employment schemes
‘Reducing the Skills Gap is a young person led
training programme that improves the
development of employability skills in young
people.’ http://youthfocusne.org.uk/reducing-the-skills-gap/
7. How we carried out our research
Face to face interviews with 7 young carers
facilitated by Youth Focus North East and Carers
Trust North East
Paired with existing literature taking a multi
dimensional approach
Due to caring commitments, group interviews
difficult to organise
8. Determining The Success Of A Pre-
employability Training Scheme
The generally accepted ways of assessing a pre-
employment schemes are:
Retention Rates
If the participants are now in work, education or
training
The acquisition of soft skills
The Young Carers in our study deemed Reducing
the Skills Gap a success as they all found work
and were all provided with the soft skills
necessary for employment
9. Results
Prior to the scheme, all participants struggled balancing caring and
school or work
Marked improvement in soft skills – time management,
professionalism, confidence, teamwork
Improved interview skills
Greater understanding of the positive attributes of being a young
carer
Informal youth led activities much preferred over a classroom
environment
All participants are now are in employment, education or training
10. “It has been difficult because I’ve been applying for
jobs but having to fit that around my caring
commitments, sometimes, I just don’t have the
time. [I] was desperate to find a job and thought the
scheme would help me.”
(Female, 20)
11. “I now know how to promote myself in an interview
and show confidence and professionalism in a working
environment. My confidence skills have also increased
and I am able to work well as a team - I couldn't
before the scheme.”
(Female, 18)
12. “The practice of doing them [soft skills] with Reducing
The Skills Gap has helped me to put them forward in
the interview, the interview experience was also
about how to talk about those skills without going ‘I
can do this, I can do that’. All of the skills you get
taught will help you in everyday life not just in work
as well.”
(Female, 17)
13. “I was able to talk about young carers and
what I’ve done and I wasn’t judged. They
just wanted you to explain it and how
that made me who I am now in the way I
come across.”
(Female, 18)
14. “The environment was very relaxed and
informal. It wasn’t so easy, but the
responsibility was shared. I liked their system
of building, applying and relating: I was able to
reflect on my learning and apply my knowledge
to the workplace.”
(Male, 24)
15. “The scheme increased my confidence to the point
where I was able to apply for an engineering
apprenticeship where, before the scheme, I wasn’t
confident enough to apply for it. It helped me pass
the interview with Sage and pass me through to the
apprenticeship.”
(Female, 18)
16. Challenges For Informal Pre-employment
Schemes
Scheme needs to be flexible to be rolled out
universally as there is no one size fits all template
Requires external cooperation from employers
willing to get involved
17. Limitations of Our Research
7 participants interviewed in a batch
of 22 who took part in this quarterly
scheme
All participants stated they had not
taken part in other similar schemes
18. Recommendations For Pre-employment
Schemes
Pre-employability training schemes have to equip
participants with the necessary skills for
employment
Pre-employability training schemes need to be
flexible and targeted to the participants needs
Young people prefer youth led schemes
No classroom setting
Fun and engaging to retain participants
19. Our Thanks
We’d also like to thank Neil and his team at Youth
Focus North East, and Ant at Carers Trust North
East for their support in facilitating the
interviews.
We’d also like to thank the young carers
themselves for giving up their time.
The method we chose to collect our data was face to face interviews with the young carers. Out of the 20 young carers who took part in the scheme we were able to interview 7 of them. During the interviews participants were questioned about their experiences prior to RTSG, the scheme itself and then life after RTSG, with a follow up questions about general unemployment in the NE.
Before conducting the interviews we began establishing some pre-conceived targets that people who expect a pre-employability scheme like this one would have in order to determine whether or not it is an example of a successful scheme.
The 3 main targets were that their retention or attendance rates were high, whether they could prove they had obtained soft skills after taking the programme and then finally whether they had successfully moved onto employment, education or training.
We will now briefly talk you through the results before covering them in more depth on the next few slides. Firstly, when talking to the young carers about before the scheme all felt they would struggle holding down work because if their caring commitments. Secondly, all young carers spoke about how doing the scheme had helped them build soft skills.
All the participants we interviewed agreed they felt more confident in an interview environment after the scheme.
All the young carers in our study came away from the scheme with a greater understanding of the positive attributes of being a young carer One key finding was that the reason Reducing the Skills Gap was able to engage the young carers was its informal and youth led programme, the carers preferred this to traditional classroom environment. And lastly, all the young carers have since found work or are in education or training.
In the first section of the interview we spoke to the young people about finding work while also being a young carer and the barriers they faced.
“It has been difficult because I’ve been applying for jobs but having to fit that around my caring commitments, sometimes, I just don’t have the time. [I] was desperate to find a job and thought the scheme would help me.”
For many these barriers were the inflexibility of employers, a general lack f soft skills and experience and as we can see from this participant the uncertainty of when they would be needed to care. There was also a feeling among the carers that their caring roles were undervalued by employers.
To be viewed as a success any pre-employability training scheme should provide participants with the skills needed to pursue employment. So for RtSG to succeed it should have provided the young carers with the soft skills necessary to gain a job.
“I now know how to promote myself in an interview and show confidence and professionalism in a working environment. My confidence skills have also increased and I am able to work well as a team - I couldn't before the scheme”
As the quotes show the seven carers we spoke to all agreed that RtSG had improved their soft skills such as confidence, communication, professionalism, time management and team work and more importantly all seven were able to prove they had applied the skills in a working environment or in general life.
What we found about employer interview skills especially was quite remarkable, we found that almost all participants had something good to say about how their interview skills had improved, these two participants were indicative of what we found.
Through Reducing the skills gap’s focus on employer interaction skills in particular it was clear to us as interviewers ourselves how almost all maintained eye contact throughout the interview, had a lot to say about themselves and the scheme.
“The practice of doing them [soft skills] with Reducing The Skills Gap has helped me to put them forward in the interview, and part of the interview experience you also got taught how to talk about those skills without going ‘I can do this, I can do that’, its backing up how you can do this, how you can do that. All of the skills you get taught will help you in everyday life not just in work as well”
On this slide in particular we can see they seemed comfortable despite the rather formal, and to some, rather intimidating setting of being a knowing participant in some academic research.
Showing what was quite unique (and therefore employable) about the experiences the participants have faced also seemed a key part of Reducing the skills gap’s focus, during their time on the scheme the participants informed us that, generally, as they began the course they were shy and very protective of themselves and did not realise that being a young carer showed skills not only in terms of the skills involved in the caring itself but also the soft skills like being flexible around the demands of another person and being able to adapt and respond to situations while maintaining a good work ethic.
“I was able to talk about young carers and what I’ve done and I wasn’t judged. They just wanted you to explain it and how that made me who I am now in the way I come across.”
As we can see here, the scheme enabled this young carer to talk openly and confidently to her employer about the skills gained from her caring role. We saw similar results throughout the scheme, with young carers giving examples of how they can now show off about the positives of being a young carer.
What is unique about Reducing the Skills Gap in particular is that it is led by other young people and has a very informal setting. Using group building exercises as well as much more formal interview training sessions. We felt it necessary to examine if this more mainly informal method of teaching soft skills was more effective than say schools. As it seems to be a part of government policy to get young people ready to work through vocational means and be more appealing to employers.
Having a focus on personal skill building and reflecting on them was something we picked up from all participants, “The environment was very relaxed and informal. It wasn’t so easy, but the responsibility was shared. I liked their system of building, applying and relating: I was able to reflect on my learning and apply my knowledge to the workplace”, this one in particular felt that the exercises relating back to them being a carer was especially important for them.
What we think is most important result was that, coming out of the programme, all participants are now in further education, employment or training. This should be appealing to anyone that has something to gain from young people being able to move off welfare and into the workplace.
“The scheme increased my confidence to the point where I was able to apply for an engineering apprenticeship where, before the scheme, I wasn’t confident enough to apply for it. It helped me pass the interview with Sage and pass me through to the apprenticeship”
As you can see the participant on this slide references how the scheme and their time as a young carer has been hugely beneficial to their job prospects. Some of the young carers were pursing their careers of choice and there are varied career choices despite all carers being in a similar situation employment and experience wise.
However, we came across a few limitations of this scheme.
Of course all young carers situations are very individual and the responsibilities and duties of one carer are very likely to be different to the next, therefore RtSG had to be very flexible with the scheme. THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR ALL SCHEMES, IF THEY CANNOT BE FLEXIBLE AND WORK AROUND PARTICIPANTS NEEDS THEN THEY WILL NOT SUCCEED.
Another critical flaw of this research is that all participants had stated that they had not taken part in any other pre-employability schemes which obviously means we have nothing to compare this scheme to others when it comes to these participants specifically and therefore cannot come close to stating whether this scheme is better than others from a comparative standpoint.
A flaw of this research is that all participants had stated that they had not taken part in any other pre-employability schemes which obviously means we have nothing to compare this scheme to others when it comes to these participants specifically and therefore cannot come close to stating whether this scheme is better than others from a comparative standpoint.
Also unrepresentative with only 7 of 22 people taking part in the scheme interviewed but difficult to organise with every young carer
After carrying out our research using the case study of Reducing the Skills Gap we compiled the following recommendations for pre-employment schemes.
Firstly, for a pre-employment scheme to succeed on the most basic level it should provide participants with the necessary skills for employment.
Secondly, pre-employment schemes cannot have a universal template, to be successful they should adapt the scheme to the participants needs.
For pre-employment schemes targeting youth unemployment they can secure a high retention rate if they make the scheme informal with young people leading the schemes and avoiding a formal setting like a classroom. These were preferred as they made the participants uncomfortable.
Finally, in order to retain participants schemes must have fun and engaging activities.
We’d like to thank Derek and Judy for putting up with us for 6 months and for guiding us through the module.
We’d also like to thank Neil and his team at Youth Focus North East and Ant at Carers Trust North East for their support in facilitating the interviews.
