Read Rotraut Weeber's article "Disproportional Rise of Youth Unemployment - Preventing Young People from Falling Though the Cracks"

Getting more out of the limited resources: effective governance Many countries have tried for years to build and extend support structures aimed at their youth. This has resulted in very diverse offers of help, but on the other hand, has seen a degree of 'doubling up' and highly segmented offers of support. Nowadays, the efforts aim at using more synergies to improve the effectiveness of support structures. Looking at successful projects in Vaulx en Velin (France), CoNet partner cities agreed that horizontal cooperation between different professions and agencies (training, social and professional inclusion, education, economy) is the hardest thing to get going because of the hermetic boundaries between professional cultures, professional ethics or lobbies.’ Ways and means to develop effective governance include building a better cooperation of all partners working in this field.

Early prevention of labour market exclusion – reaching out to young people While young people remain in 'the system' – school and vocational training institutions – they are within support structures and they can be reached. As soon as they leave the educational system, however, they fall outside the support structures and contact can often only be made at a local level. Job centres and other responsible institutions may be further away than educational and training institutions; and their work is mostly based on a city or regional level. Youth and social outreach work has been practised by community and street workers for many years, but nowadays outreach work is increasingly directly aimed at employment and career. Although, in many countries such work remains extremely rare, URBACT cities have developed interesting examples such as in the Fosie District in Malmö.

More do-able qualification steps, provided by an intermediate labour market at a more sophisticated level

The harder it is to find work and job placements, and the longer this situation continues, the more necessary it is to offer career stepping stones in the intermediate labour market. To design a systematic scheme of career qualification especially aimed at those with little education, it is important to break down the official qualification programmes into smaller size steps which are do-able by young people excluded from the labour market. In URBACT, the close collaboration of Liverpool and Sofia holds great innovative potential on ways to develop apprenticeships, jobs and holistic support to enter the job market.

Evolving good practice and ensuring implementation

Better governance concerning young people's transition from school to career, early prevention by reaching out to young people, enough do-able jobs and qualification offers, including those jobs  directed to less educated students, can be created within the framework of integrated neighbourhood and infrastructure development, such as for instance in Berlin.
The challenge is now to enlarge the impact and sustainability of programmes and projects that aim at tackling youth unemployment.

To learn more on specific examples of projects developed by URBACT cities, such as Berlin, Liverpool, Sofia, Malmö and Vaulx en Velin, and on ways to strengthen the sustainability and quality of projects, Download 20091130_weeber301109_PeterRamsden.pdf (1.16 MB).

Read more:

• Download 20091130_weeber301109_PeterRamsden.pdf (1.16 MB) – PDF
• CoNet – URBACT website