Our CEO, Barry Fletcher, welcomes the Government’s response to the Dormant Assets Scheme consultation.
We’re delighted that youth was strongly endorsed as the most popular cause by the public in the Dormant Assets Scheme consultation. It’s also great to see support for financial inclusion, social investment and community wealth funds included and we look forward to continuing our work with organisations leading in these areas.
As the cost-of-living crisis intensifies, and mental ill health increases, it is alarming that 14.5% of 18-24-year-olds are not earning or learning, higher than it was during the pandemic. This challenge risks long-term scarring effects and makes our mission as important as ever.
The opportunity is significant. Our recent research with PwC shows that if we could reduce the UK’s NEET* rate to the levels found in Germany, it would benefit our GDP by £38 billion. Ensuring young people can get into work, and stay in work, will be vital to our national growth prospects and addressing the workforce shortage employers face.
Since 2019, Youth Futures has invested £36million to build the evidence base of what works to inform youth employment policy by learning from and evaluating the projects we fund. Our aim is to identify tested, costed levers and approaches for change, enabling policymakers, employers and commissioners to scale up what we learn to a national level and in local communities. Changing the system is the only way to unlock more employment opportunities for young people from marginalised backgrounds, for good.
To achieve this, we focus on the people and places in most need. This includes areas of high youth unemployment, young people from UK ethnic minorities and those with experience of offending, care and mental health challenges. The life-changing programmes we fund range from bespoke support for care leavers in the West of England to providing young people at risk of gang exploitation in the East Midlands with the skills and networks they need to move into full-time employment.
Continued support for Youth Futures would enable us to build on this momentum to reduce marginalisation. Our focus will be on preventing long-term youth unemployment, improving support for young people at a local level and building the evidence base of effective interventions.
