The Fourth Strand: Youth Services Are An Economic Asset

Remember your first wage packet?  I had loads of jobs as a kid.  I remember the milk route, the bag with fifty-five Belfast Telegraphs, and eventually a local factory all paying me for my time, sometimes in a wee tiny brown envelope. I loved it.  I also remember the chaos in my life during these years.  It was these jobs (and the money they provided) that gave me stability and hope, which was strengthened by my access to youth services.  It was the economy and the social safety net. 

Northern Ireland has achieved something remarkable.  According to the PwC Youth Employment Index 2025, Northern Ireland now has the lowest NEET rate in the UK at 9%, compared to 15% in London, 16% in Scotland, and 14% across much of England.[1] The scale of the UK-wide problem is stark. The Resolution Foundation reports that the number of NEETs has risen sharply in recent years, reaching almost one million in 2025, the highest rate in a decade. More than one in eight young people are now classified as NEET, up from one in seven in 2019.[2] Against this backdrop, Northern Ireland’s progress stands out. The region has reduced its NEET rate from 12% to 9% between 2021 and 2024.[3]

How has Northern Ireland achieved this?  For me, it is youth organisations.  This is a fourth strand of provision that operates alongside schools, further education colleges, and training organisations, a strand that has been hiding in plain sight for decades but rarely receives formal recognition in skills policy. Yet this very success is now under threat.

The Limitations of Traditional Provision

Northern Ireland’s approach to skills development has traditionally been built around three pillars: schools, further education colleges, and training organisations. These serve many young people well, but they also share characteristics that create barriers for others.  Adults tend to forget these, so let me list some: formal entry requirements exclude those with limited qualifications; structured learning environments may not suit different learning styles; time-bound programmes with fixed start and end dates assume a level of stability that many disadvantaged young people simply do not have.

Last year, the Pivotal Report on education, skills and training for young people aged 14-19 identified the core problem. Work-readiness programmes, it notes, are focused on employment in the absence of the life circumstances that often contribute to and maintain unemployment. Housing difficulties, health and mental health problems, and substance misuse all influence whether a young person can engage with traditional provision.[4] Yet most programmes lack the resources or flexibility to address these factors.  These are the restrictions that youth organisations manage; in fact, it is our attention to these needs that attracts young people to our services. 

The Resolution Foundation’s 2025 analysis reveals how the composition of youth worklessness has fundamentally shifted. Since 2005, the share of NEETs who are inactive due to sickness or disability has increased by 17 percentage points, rising from 11% to reach almost one third of young people who are NEET in 2025. By contrast, inactivity due to family and home care responsibilities has more than halved over the same period, falling from 29% to just 10%.[5] Mental health has become the defining barrier to employment for a growing proportion of young people, and traditional provision was not designed to address it.

Perhaps most troubling is the trend toward delayed labour market entry. The Resolution Foundation found that young people are increasingly unlikely ever to have worked. For those born between 1981-1985, just 38% had never worked by age 17. For those born between 1996 and 2000, this had risen to almost two-thirds at 65%. In 2005, 42% of NEETs had never had a job, but by 2025, this had risen to 60%.[6] Entering adulthood without any work experience limits opportunities to build skills, confidence and earnings potential.

What Youth Work Brings That Others Cannot

Youth work organisations operate differently. The ARK Policy Brief on the value of youth work, published in March 2023, captures the distinctiveness of this approach. The youth work methodology, it notes, adopts flexible and innovative methods, develops trusting relationships between the youth worker and young people, starts with a strengths-based approach building on existing skills and talents, and utilises group work processes to facilitate learning. This approach has been shown to be an effective way to work with young people, preparing them for employment and supporting them to progress into and sustain employment.[7]

The evidence for this approach is substantial. The Education and Training Inspectorate rated 97% of European Social Fund youth projects as good or better, with 45% rated as outstanding.[8] Data from the Department for Economy’s ESF Managing Authority shows that ESF-funded youth provisions exceeded all performance targets, with 16,052 young people supported against a target of 15,000. Progression to employment and further training or education targets were exceeded by 163% and 129% respectively, with 9,706 young people progressing into positive outcomes.[9]

More recently, the YouthStart partnership in Northern Ireland, which brings together seven youth work charities, has demonstrated what this approach can achieve at scale. Since 2024, the consortium engaged and supported 2,387 young people, exceeding its target by 109. Of these, 513 progressed into work and 1,005 into further training or education, giving a combined progression rate of 64%.[10] These are young people who had been furthest from the labour market, many of whom had been dismissed by other services as hard to reach.

The youth work sector is doing the hard yards of engagement, building trust with young people who have learned to distrust institutions, and supporting them on their journey toward excellent employers and colleges across Northern Ireland.

The Economic Case for Recognition

The economic argument for investing in youth work is compelling. Frontier Economics research determined that the youth sector in England generates £5.7 billion in direct economic value, with an additional £3.2 billion of indirect value. Of this indirect value, £0.8 billion derives specifically from increased employment and education outcomes.[11] Scale these figures proportionately to Northern Ireland and the return on investment becomes clear.

The cost-effectiveness of youth work provision reinforces this case. The YouthStart programme delivered a unit cost of £2,111 per participant, well below the projected cost of £2,500. These figures compare favourably with mainstream provision, particularly when considering the complexity of barriers faced by participants.

Success at Risk: The Funding Crisis

Yet at the very moment when Northern Ireland should be building on this success, the infrastructure that made it possible is being dismantled. The transition from European Social Fund investment to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund has created significant funding gaps over the past three years, and now reduced allocations under the NI Local Growth Fund threaten to further cut the support offered by youth organisations.

Across the UK, there are now around 3 million young people who are economically inactive, almost 20% more than a decade ago and the highest proportion of any working-age group.[12] Northern Ireland’s success in bucking this trend has not happened by accident. It has happened because place-based youth organisations have been doing the patient, relationship-based work of reaching young people who would otherwise fall through the cracks. The regional disparities within Northern Ireland illustrate why place-based provision matters. These are not variations that can be addressed by centralised programmes delivered in places where young people cannot access. They require youth workers embedded in communities, known and trusted by local young people, who understand the specific barriers and opportunities in each area.

The logic is straightforward. Young people furthest from the labour market do not walk into Job Centres or respond to online advertisements for training programmes. They need to be found, engaged, and supported by people they trust. They need to know they are not being judged.  That trust is built over months and years by youth workers who are present in communities, who understand family circumstances, who recognise when a young person is ready to take the next step and when they need more time. This is skilled, demanding work that cannot be replicated by short-term programmes or remote services. It does not need to be costly, but it is not cost-free.

A Call for Investment, Not Retreat

The Resolution Foundation’s analysis underscores the urgency of action. Tackling the NEET challenge, they conclude, will require targeted and sustained policy interventions. It is vital that youth employment policy is not narrowly focused on those NEETs who are claiming benefits. Instead, a wider policy is needed: one that offers all young people, even those who are not claiming benefits, the support they need to move into good-quality work or study.[13] Youth work is precisely the kind of provision that reaches young people who are not in contact with benefit systems.  In Northern Ireland, we have one that could continue to support young people furthest from the economy.   Why risk losing it when we need to build our economy and get these young people included?  Here are a few things we need to do:

Firstly, the ARK Policy Brief recommended establishing a co-commission model across the NI Assembly, which includes representation from economy, health and education for developing strategies and commissioning of services in relation to addressing young people and employment.[14] This recognition that youth employability cannot be addressed by any single department alone reflects the reality that employment, mental health, and social inclusion are inseparable challenges.

Secondly, youth work should be formally recognised as a fourth strand alongside schools, colleges, and training organisations for developing skills, with similar funding and commissioning arrangements.

Thirdly, the NI Local Growth Fund should prioritise maintaining and strengthening place-based youth organisations rather than reducing them.  At least £5m per year should be invested in helping NEET young people access training and employment.  We should drive our NEET figure to less than 5%.

Fourthly, the Labour Market Partnerships should establish clear frameworks for collaboration with youth work organisations, enabling them to do the hard yards of engagement that connect young people to the excellent employers and colleges that want to recruit them. 

Finally, the upcoming new youth work policy for Northern Ireland should focus on enabling young people to access the economy through place-based youth work through the community and voluntary sector. Youth work should be positioned in the new strategy as a contributor to creating an inclusive economy for young people.

Northern Ireland has achieved something remarkable in reducing its NEET rate below that of every other UK region. At a time when the rest of the UK is grappling with youth unemployment at its highest level in years, Northern Ireland offers a model of what is possible. But this success is fragile. Cut the funding for place-based youth organisations, and economic inactivity will rise. The progress of recent years will be reversed. The young people who most need support will once again fall through the gaps, and the employers and colleges ready to offer them opportunities will wonder why the pipeline of prepared young people has dried up.

I want to see more young people access the safety net of youth services while finding access to the economy. 

The question for policymakers is simple: will they invest in what works, or will they allow a proven success to be dismantled?

[1]PwC Youth Employment Index 2025, December 2025, p.17.

[2]Resolution Foundation: False Starts, October 2025, p.8. According to ONS data, the number of NEETs reached 948,000 in April-June 2025.

[3]PwC Youth Employment Index 2025, p.17. Northern Ireland’s NEET rate fell from 12% to 9% between 2021 and 2024.

[4]Pivotal Report: Education, Skills and Training for Young People Aged 14-19 Years Old.

[5]Resolution Foundation: False Starts, October 2025, p.15. Since 2005, the share of NEETs inactive due to sickness or disability increased from 11% to 28%.

[6]Resolution Foundation: False Starts, October 2025, p.21. For those born 1996-2000, 65% had never worked by age 17, compared to 38% for those born 1981-1985.

[7]ARK Policy Brief: The Value of Youth Work, March 2023.

[8]ETI Chief Inspector’s Report 2016-2018, cited in ARK Policy Brief: The Value of Youth Work, March 2023.

[9]Department for Economy ESF Managing Authority data, cited in ARK Policy Brief: The Value of Youth Work, March 2023.

[10]YouthStart External Evaluation (Hewitt, 2022), cited in ARK Policy Brief: The Value of Youth Work, March 2023.

[11]Frontier Economics & UK Youth: The Economic Value of Youth Work (2022), cited in ARK Policy Brief.

[12]PwC Youth Employment Index 2025, p.3. There are now around 3 million young people who are economically inactive across the UK, almost 20% more than a decade ago.

[13]Resolution Foundation: False Starts, October 2025, p.39.

[14]ARK Policy Brief: The Value of Youth Work, March 2023, recommendations section.