Safety Net: the essential role of youth organisations

Safety Net: the essential role of youth organisations in supporting young people who are NEET.

Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald put the issue starkly this week (3^rd February). Speaking to Belfast Live on the second anniversary of the Executive’s return, she acknowledged that Northern Ireland’s youth unemployment figures are ‘going in the wrong direction’. The latest NISRA figures show 23,000 young people not in employment, education or training. The Minister was clear: this trend ‘cannot be addressed by one department alone’. I could not agree more.

Behind every one of those 23,000 young people is a story. Parents, grandparents, carers who lie awake wondering how to help a teenager who won’t leave their room, who has given up on school, who is drifting further from the pathways their peers are following. These families are not failing. Neither is their child. They are facing structural problems for a growing part of our population.

This is where youth organisations, particularly those focused on employability, matter in ways that policy documents in Northern Ireland never (and I check) reflect. Youth organisations don’t just offer employment programmes. They are safety nets. They are one of the last ways for young people to escape the grip of worklessness and the problems it brings.

Not Alone (but we need to support youth organisations to maintain this!)

When a young person disengages from education or employment, the weight falls heavily on those with parental responsibility. Teachers have moved on to other students. Official services have limited capacity. Friends may have distanced themselves. What remains is often a parent or carer trying to reach someone who has stopped believing that anyone can help.

Youth organisations fill this gap in ways that statutory services cannot. They offer something that sounds simple but proves transformative: another trusted adult in a young person’s life. The ARK Policy Brief on the value of youth work describes what this looks like in practice. Youth workers build relationships over months, sometimes years. They recognise that there will be relapses on the young person’s journey, but they help them keep going, build resilience and consistently believe in their potential.

For families, this changes everything. A parent is no longer the only voice encouraging their child. A carer is no longer carrying the entire burden of motivation and support. The young person has someone outside the family dynamic who believes in them, who will show up next week regardless of what happened this week. The family has allies.

The Trust Problem

Many young people who are NEET do not trust the systems designed to help them. Research published by Ipsos in April 2025 found that only 25% of people in Great Britain feel they have any influence over decision-making in their local area. For young people, the sense of powerlessness is often more acute.

The Demos report Inside the Mind of a 16-Year-Old, published in November 2025, found that while young people support democracy as a system, they are deeply frustrated with how it delivers for them. They want responsiveness to their concerns. This same distrust shapes how they view all institutions, including those meant to support them into employment.

Parents see this distrust play out daily. A young person who has experienced school as a place of failure will not respond to another programme that looks and feels like school. This is not a critique of our schools. Simply an acknowledgement that, with rising NEET figures and increasing school absenteeism, a significant minority of young people are not participating or experiencing the support and care Schools provide.

No amount of parental encouragement can overcome this institutional distrust. It must be rebuilt by institutions themselves, through consistent, patient, relationship-based work. This is precisely what youth organisations do. They are not the state, even when they receive state funding. They operate in spaces young people experience as theirs. They employ staff who understand the communities they serve. Trust is built person by person, conversation by conversation.

A Generation Learning to Expect Less

The Resolution Foundation’s research into generational contracts provides context for this disengagement. Housing, wages, job security, and wealth accumulation have all become harder for each successive generation. Young people are not apathetic. They have made a rational assessment that the promises made to them may not be kept.

The Foundation’s False Starts report, published in October 2025, documents a troubling trend. Young people are increasingly delaying entry into work. For those born between 1981-1985, just 38% had never worked by age 17. For those born between 1996-2000, this had risen to 65%. In 2005, 42% of NEETs had never had a job; by 2025, this had risen to 60%.

This is not young people choosing extended education. It reflects a broader disconnection from the labour market itself. For those who have had negative experiences of education, of family breakdown, of institutions that judged and rejected them, the prospect of engaging with yet another system holds little appeal.

For families, this creates a painful dynamic. Parents who worked their way up, who believed that effort would be rewarded, struggle to understand why their children seem paralysed. The values that served one generation feel inadequate for the challenges facing the next. Community youth workers can bridge this gap, helping both young people and their families understand what has changed and what remains possible. In many ways, we seek to maintain hope and optimism in difficult moments.

What Actually Works

The evidence is clear about what helps young people who are NEET. The Public First research into 16-year-old voters, published in December 2025, found that young people trusted their parents and established institutions far more than political messaging. They responded to authenticity and quickly detected exaggeration or bias.

The ARK Policy Brief describes what authenticity looks like in youth employability programmes: organisations that have developed robust programmes that provide wraparound support. The relationship between young people and youth workers is key. This patience and consistency, maintained over months and sometimes years, is what distinguishes effective provision from transactional approaches. It cannot be delivered by institutions that young people distrust. It cannot be replaced by online portals or self-service options. It requires people who show up week after week, believing in young people who may have stopped believing in themselves.

Youth organisations are key to engaging young people and helping them maintain their hope and optimism. However, we need to invest in youth organisations and develop better pathways that utilise their capacity and how they connect to further education and employment.

The Funding Question We Must Answer

In England, the new Youth Guarantee scheme is making a £100 million investment specifically targeting NEETs, ensuring that young people furthest from opportunity can find a pathway into the economy. This was directly informed by the Resolution Foundation’s False Starts report published in October. The UK Government has recognised the scale of the challenge and is responding with significant new investment.

The issue is clearly relevant here in Northern Ireland. Minister Archibald herself has acknowledged that NEET figures are rising and require cross-departmental action. The Skills Action Plan, published in October 2025, specifically mentions enhancing skills provision for young people with special educational needs who often face a cliff edge in support.

Yet in Northern Ireland, over the last five years, the community and voluntary sector organisations that directly support NEETs have seen their funding dramatically reduced. During the European Social Fund period, approximately £5 million was invested annually in NEET provision. Under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, this fell to around £3 million. From April 2025, Northern Ireland will directly invest just £1 million in NEET support through YouthStart.

This decline in investment is occurring at a time when NEET numbers are rising in Northern Ireland. It is happening even though the UK Government’s stated mission is to grow the economy. The question policymakers must answer is stark: are you content that we are not growing the economy for everyone, particularly young people labelled as NEET?

Behind the statistics are real young people and real families. Parents are trying to support children who have lost hope. Carers are watching young relatives drift further from any pathway forward. Grandparents raising grandchildren in circumstances they never anticipated. These families need to know they are not alone. They need youth organisations that can reach young people when families cannot. They need a safety net that catches everyone.

The infrastructure exists. The expertise to engage NEET young people lies within youth organisations. The relationships with vulnerable young people and their families exist. What is needed is the investment to sustain them. Without it, families will continue to carry burdens they should not have to bear alone, and young people will continue to learn that the systems designed to help them cannot be trusted to be there when they need them most.

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