Specialist internships designed to secure work for young people with special educational needs should be put on “turbocharge” to help tackle the growing youth jobs crisis, a government review is to propose. Alan Milburn who is leading a review of young people and work, said supported internships should be scaled up to combat “devastating” joblessness rates for young people with a learning disability, autism or mental illness. Nationally, as few as 5% of some groups of young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) move into permanent jobs.
However, employment rates among those who complete supported internship schemes can be as high as 70%. Nearly 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are classified as Neet (not in employment, education or training), a 10-year high that Milburn – a former minister in the Tony Blair government – has said represents a moral crisis and is economically unsustainable. In May, his first report warned that Britain risked a 25% rise in the number of Neets to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.
Central to the recent growth of Neets is an increase in young people diagnosed at school with neurodevelopmental conditions or mental illness who do not make the transition into work, leaving them at high risk of becoming economically inactive. Milburn said the UK had to move away from the idea that people with a diagnosis were unable to work. With the best ones around 70% of the people on them end up in paid employment.
In my view we have to turbocharge support – and at the moment the system is not set up to do that.” Milburn dismissed “myths” about 18- to 24-year-olds being a “snowflake generation”, saying: “The problem isn’t shortage of effort on the part of young people. It’s a shortage of opportunities, jobs, support.” He added: “There are two views about [the rise in youth ill health]. You can either say it’s fake or you can decide its real.
So we’ve got to deal with it and we have got to adjust our systems to deal with it.” The Guardian recently reported that English primary schools could be required to identify children at risk of leaving education at 16 without finding a job as part of the Milburn review. And secondary schools and other services should be intercepting, intervening, supporting and helping those young people to get on a different path.” The year-long internships provide tailored onsite work experience and job coaching for 16- to 24-year-olds with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) who face high barriers to the job market. Employers involved include the NHS, Asda and Amazon.
Callum Beeston, a 20-year-old from Doncaster who has autism, recently completed a supported internship at Amazon with job coach support from Aspirations Doncaster. This month he started a full-time job there as a warehouse operative, and has been praised for his work from his bosses. Beeston said his family’s expectations of him finding work after he finished school were low and he was “unsure what to do next”.
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