£347K boost to tackle job barriers for young people in Sheffield

We’re pleased to have awarded over £347,000 in funding to Firvale Community Hub, to help support Sheffield’s most marginalised young people into work.

A new project aimed at examining local barriers to employment, and access to apprenticeships, for marginalised young people has been launched by Firvale Community Hub, backed by our place-based systems change programme, Connected Futures.

Firvale Community Hub will work alongside Saalik Youth Project and local providers to support British Pakistani and Bangladeshi young people aged 16–24, a group that remains significantly underrepresented in apprenticeships and whom experience some of the highest unemployment rates in the city.

Evidence from our Youth Employment Toolkit suggests that for every ten young people who take part in an apprenticeship, one person will gain employment who otherwise would not have.

Working with local young people, parents, employers, colleges and community leaders, Firvale Community Hub will focus on understanding the barriers young people face in accessing local, good-quality apprenticeships in Sheffield, and design new ways to open doors into meaningful jobs and training.

The project will engage employers across Sheffield, including partnerships with organisations based at the Advanced Manufacturing Park and the University of Sheffield, to develop more inclusive recruitment practices and raise awareness of apprenticeship opportunities available in the area.

Across the UK, the number of young people who are currently not in education, employment or training (NEET), stands at nearly 1 million, equivalent to one in eight young people.

Young people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds face some of the steepest inequalities, particularly in access to apprenticeships, where they remain significantly underrepresented despite efforts to improve diversity across the skills and training sector.