Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Youth Hub work coaches are employed by his Department as of 19 June 2023; and how many were employed on the same date in (a) 2022 and (b) 2021.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Youth Hubs are part of the wider DWP Youth Offer which also includes the Youth Employment Programme and Youth Employability Coaches. Youth Hubs across Great Britain bring together employment support from a Jobcentre Plus Work Coach and place-based support from local partnerships to help young people into work. The support offered in a Youth Hub is dependent on local needs and includes skills, training, employment provision and dedicated support services.
Due to changes in claimant needs new Youth Hubs may open, and existing Youth Hubs may close. The number of open Youth Hubs and their required Youth Hub Work Coach resource may therefore fluctuate, as claimants access wider Youth Offer support.
The figures included offer a Full Time Equivalent (FTE) of Youth Hub Work Coaches. As some Youth Hub Work Coaches may work part-time in a Youth Hub, or across multiple Youth Hubs, we do not expect this number to be equivalent to the number of Youth Hub sites.
Role |
| ABM FTE |
|
| May-23 | May-22 | May-21 |
Youth Hub Work Coach | 100 | 140 | 140 |
Source: DWP’s internal Activity Based Model (ABM)
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Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities do not face stigma when applying for employment.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
On the 2nd April, DWP launched a new review, led by Rt Hon Sir Robert Buckland KC MP, that will explore ways to increase the number of autistic people in employment. One area of focus in the review is understanding the working practices or initiatives that can reduce stigma and improve the productivity of autistic employees. Whilst the review focuses specifically on autistic people, many of the issues and solutions are likely to be similar for other young people with SEND, and they will also benefit from the recommendations the review will bring forward.
The Disability Confident scheme supports employers to make the most of the talents disabled people of all ages can bring to the workplace. It provides employers with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to attract, recruit, retain and develop, disabled people in the workplace. It aims to challenge the stigmas of what it means to employ a disabled person and encourages employers to think differently about disability and to take positive action to address the issues disabled employees face in the workplace. This is in addition to DWP providing employment support to employers and young people with SEND to overcome barriers to employment. This support includes:
The Department for Education are investing c£18 million until 2025 to build capacity and level up quality in the Supported Internships Programme and double the number of internships to support more young people with SEND into employment. This includes grant funding to all local authorities and support and training to strengthen the quality of their supported internship offers, alongside activities to engage employers and support them to host interns.
To ensure that employers are supported to create new apprenticeship opportunities, the Department for Education provide targeted financial support directly to training providers to help remove barriers and stigmas for people with a learning difficulty or disability. Employers could receive £1,000 towards the costs of workplace support when they take on an apprentice aged 16-18 or 19-25 with an Education, Health, and Care Plan, as well as help to cover the extra costs working individuals may have because of their disability through the DWP’s Access to Work scheme. Improvements have also been made to the Find an Apprenticeship service to allow people to identify Disability Confident employers offering opportunities.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking through the criminal justice system to help young people avoid crime.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The Beating Crime Plan 2021 highlighted the importance of early intervention for all young people; targeted support for those at risk of involvement in criminality; and targeted interventions for those who have started to offend. It is better that children do not enter the justice system at all, which is why the Ministry of Justice works with partners across and outside of government on programmes which provide help earlier on.
The Turnaround programme is providing £56.5m multi-year grant funding to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) across England and Wales until March 2025, enabling them to intervene earlier and improve outcomes for children on the cusp of entering the youth justice system. This additional funding will enable YOTs to work with up to 17,500 more children not currently on their caseload. The department’s Youth Justice Sports Fund also recently provided £5m to early intervention sport programmes working with 10–17-year-olds considered to be at risk of entering the justice system, who have benefitted from mentoring, volunteering and sports-based activities.
For those children who do enter the justice system, we want to see local areas addressing the underlying needs which drove that offending behaviour. As part of this, last year the Ministry of Justice developed new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor and drive Youth Offending Teams’ and partners’ effectiveness in, for example, ensuring more children who commit crime have the education, training or employment opportunities to break the cycle of offending. These new KPIs came into force on 1 April.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Derby (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the success of the Youth Offer and Kickstart scheme against their stated aims of supporting those under 25 to find employment.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Evaluations of the Youth Offer and the Kickstart Scheme are ongoing.
The Kickstart evaluation will continue to assess the longer-term outcomes for Kickstart participants after they have completed their six-month jobs. The commissioned process evaluation will conclude in Spring 2023.
We aim to publish the findings of the Kickstart Scheme evaluation once complete.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.
Answered by Robert Halfon
Local authorities have a statutory duty to identify and support young people who are not in education, employment and training (NEET). All 16 and 17-year-olds are entitled to an offer of a suitable place in education or training under the September Guarantee, regardless of qualifications gained.
Since 2010, the department has put in place a range of policies that have significantly reduced the quantity of young people designated as ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET). The proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds NEET in 2022 was 12.3%, which is down 3.2 percentage points since 2010. This information can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/neet-statistics-annual-brief/2022.
A range of provision is available for young people aged 16-24 to equip them with the skills and experience they need to progress. This includes joined-up support to young people to help minimise time spent NEET, such as Youth Hubs and Supported Internships, which offer tailored support for young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
The department’s ‘Get the Jump’ campaign is targeting young people aged 14 to 19 to ensure they are aware of all the education and training choices available to them, how they compare and where they can lead.
We are prioritising the rollout of Careers Hubs. Evidence shows that schools and colleges which are part of a Hub achieve almost double the amount of Gatsby Benchmarks of Good Career Guidance than those not part of a Hub. This is important because each additional benchmark achieved by a school is typically associated with a 1.4% decline in NEET rates, amounting to a 9.7% decline if a school achieves all eight benchmarks compared to achieving no benchmarks, either fully or partially.
In addition to this, the National Careers Service (NCS) offers intensive support for the most disadvantaged cohorts of the working-age population, including NEET 18 to 24-year-olds. They can access impartial, local careers advice via the NCS, either face-to-face or via the telephone helpline, webchat or website.
The department is also taking steps to increase the number and quality of apprenticeships which will create further opportunities for young people. The new ‘Career Starter Apprenticeships’ campaign is raising awareness of apprenticeships which offer great opportunities for those looking for their first role after leaving full-time education, and we are working with the Department for Work and Pensions to share and promote this information through Job Centre Plus.
The department provides a range of financial support for students who need it to enable them to participate in post-16 education, including free meals, bursaries to help with the cost of education, such as travel, books, equipment, and trips, and support for childcare and residential costs where required. We allocated over £152 million in the 2022/23 academic year to institutions to help disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds with costs such as travel, with a further £31.7 million allocated for free further education meals.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that targeted careers advice and the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge programme reaches Gypsy and Traveller young people, including those who are being educated at home.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to ensuring that all young people and adults can access high-quality careers information, advice, and guidance, regardless of their background.
The department is currently developing a Get the Jump communications pack to help Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) stakeholders share information about post-16 and post-18 education and training choices with GRT parents and young people. We will share the pack with members of the department’s GRT stakeholder group at its next meeting and will discuss how we can effectively support GRT young people.
The National Careers Service also provides free, up to date, impartial information, advice and guidance on careers, skills and the Labour Market in England. It is delivered by over 750 careers advisers who help customers to make informed choices about their career options, whatever their age, ethnic group, and background.
Working with the Careers and Enterprise Company, Youth Employment UK have developed a free, new online programme designed to support home-educated young people. This project aims to engage young people with trusted, self-directed learning and high-quality signposting to information about pathways, online experiences of the workplace, sector information, and transitions support. Resources are being developed to be used by multi-agency frontline workers, local authorities, and support staff working with young people being educated outside of mainstream education.
The Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) programme is raising awareness of apprenticeships and T Levels to young people in schools and colleges. Since September 2022, it has worked with over 380,000 young people from across all regions and demographics.
In addition to working with schools that request support across the country, ASK targets selected levelling-up areas and works closely with schools with students identified as requiring additional support through its development school programme.
ASK works closely with local authorities to identify young people who are not in education employment or training (NEET), or at risk of being NEET to provide additional support. The programme also works with local authorities and a variety of supporting stakeholders to provide the service to young people outside of education.
Asked by: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to improve diversity and inclusion in the UK’s science and technology education and workforce.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Research and Development People and Culture Strategy sets out the actions that Government and the sector need to take to ensure the UK has the talented workforce it needs to be a global science superpower. This included a review of youth engagement (including the STEM Ambassadors programme), and its effects to encourage more diverse young people into research and innovation.
The Department supports a range of work to improve diversity and inclusion in UK science and technology education in schools. This includes funding an Inclusion in Schools project designed to increase the uptake of A level physics from pupils in underrepresented groups, including girls. It also includes funding the Isaac Physics programme, an online platform of GCSE and A level physics materials developed by Cambridge University designed to increase the numbers of pupils, particularly from typically underrepresented backgrounds, studying physics in higher education.
The Department is investing £84 million into the National Centre for Computing Education to drive increased participation in computer science and funding research programmes on how to improve gender balance in STEM subjects.
Positive progress has been made on uptake of STEM in further education which will help to improve diversity in the workplace.
With over 350 high-quality apprenticeship standards available in STEM sectors, apprenticeships are supporting people of all backgrounds to begin, or progress in, careers in science and technology. The number of STEM apprenticeship starts by women has increased year-on-year, with 14,110 starts in the 2021/22 academic year, an increase of 56% compared to the 9,020 starts in the 2017/18 academic year. The Department is promoting STEM apprenticeships in schools through our Apprenticeship Knowledge and Support programme and our Apprenticeships Diversity Champions Network of influential employers promotes best practices in recruiting and retaining people from all backgrounds in STEM apprenticeships.
The Department is also working with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to deliver new postgraduate AI and data science conversion courses to boost diversity in AI jobs. The conversion courses provide people with the opportunity to find new employment in AI and data science sectors, even for those who had no previous experience in the field. In the first year of the programme, 76% of the scholarships awarded have gone to women, 45% to black students, and 24% to students with disabilities. There will be an additional 2,000 scholarships to be delivered between 2023 and 2025.
Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of long-term youth unemployment in (a) Coventry North East constituency and (b) Coventry; and what (i) financial and (ii) other steps he is taking to tackle long-term youth unemployment in those areas.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The sample size of the Annual Population Survey is too small to provide robust estimates of the trends in long-term youth unemployed in the areas identified.
The Government is committed to delivering targeted support for all young people, no matter what their start in life or the challenges they face, to give them the best chance of getting into work.
The DWP Youth Offer provides individually tailored work coach support to young people aged 16 to 24 who are in the Universal Credit Intensive Work Search group
As well as the DWP Youth Offer, this support offer includes skills training, work experience, Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs), mentoring circles and support funded through other organisations.
Skilled Jobcentre Youth Work Coaches are working harder than ever to help employers fill vacancies. It remains our top priority to match the right young jobseeker with the right job. Key to this is our three Coventry Jobcentres, one based at the Coventry Building Society (CBS) Arena, in North Coventry, continuing to host daily successful recruitment events for both local and national employers.
Sector-based Work Academy Programmes are also proving a vital tool in offering unemployed young people a route into employment. Through Pre-Employment Training, Work Experience and a Guaranteed Job Interview, these academies offer a successful and unique approach to recruitment. Employers currently working with us on this initiative are Coventry Rugby Club, Marriott Hotels, DHL, NHS, Premier Inn, Coop, Coventry City Council, Atalian Servest.
In Coventry Youth Hub, DWP are on site with local partner organisations to offer a range of services to young people in Coventry. We have two permanent Work Coaches co-located whose primary focus is to address barriers to work, motivate and move claimants closer to the labour market.
In the Progression to work program there is a Flexible Support Fund funded grant for St Giles to support 16 – 30 year olds who need support removing barriers to move them closer to work, to include NEETs (not in education employment or training), ex-offenders, those at risk of exploitation or gang violence.
Asked by: Suzanne Webb (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to help young people find employment.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The most recent Official ONS Labour Market Statistics, for the period October to December 2022, show that the current youth employment rate was 54.1%. This is up 3.2% on 2010 figures and 6.6% above the G7 average.
This Government remains committed to delivering a comprehensive and tailored package of support for 16–24-year-olds claiming Universal Credit and seeking employment or progression through the DWP Youth Offer. This includes an initial 13 weeks of intensive help through the Youth Employment Programme, Youth Employability Coaches for those with complex barriers to employment and our national network of partner led Youth Hubs.
For the young people of Stourbridge, the Dudley Youth Hub is a fundamental part of the support offered. Through this Hub, our work coaches can meet with claimants who have a barrier to employment in an alternative setting that allows them to feel at ease and engage with a range of on-site services. Examples of this include a range of employer and recruitment events, Disability Employment Advisors matching claimants with Disability Confident employers and regular National Career Service pre-employability training.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to deter knife crime among young people.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Tackling knife crime amongst young people is a top government priority and we are working tirelessly to keep young people, families, and communities safe. At the Home Office we are redoubling our efforts with a twin-track approach, combining tough enforcement to get dangerous weapons off the streets – including through stop and search methods – with programmes that steer young people away from crime.
This financial year we have invested £64m in our network of Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) which bring together local partners to tackle the drivers of violence in their area. VRUs are delivering a range of early intervention and prevention programmes to divert people away from a life of crime. They have reached over 215,000 vulnerable young people in their third year of funding alone.
Our £30m ‘Grip’ programme operates in these same 20 areas as VRUs and is helping to drive down violence by using a highly data-driven process to identify violence hotspots – often to individual street level – and target operational activity in those areas. In their first three years of funded delivery, these programmes have collectively prevented an estimated 136,000 violence without injury offences.
In addition, the Serious Violence Duty which commenced on 31st January requires a range of public bodies to work together to prevent and reduce serious violence in their local area. Of course, the Home Office is not able to tackle violence alone, and we work closely with a range of government departments to build protective factors against violence.
For instance, we work with the Department for Education as we know that education is a powerful protective factor against violence for young people. The Government is investing over £45 million to fund specialist support in both mainstream and Alternative Provision (AP) schools in the areas where serious violence is most damaging to local communities.
Additionally, we are also delivering the £3.3 million Creating Opportunities Forum with the Department for Work and Pensions to provide meaningful employment-related opportunities and raise the aspirations of young people at risk of serious violence.
The Government remains wholly committed to preventing youth violence and keeping young people safe from harm.