How is mental health affecting young people accessing the labour market and quality work?

The National Lottery Community Fund is the leading non-statutory funder of opportunities for young people. This means we have a wealth of insight and learning from our programmes that have focused on supporting young people with their mental health and employment journey.

We aim to share our insight and learning and as part of this last week we responded to the Youth Employment APPG inquiry: How is mental health affecting young people accessing the labour market and quality work?

In our response we focused on three of our large scale, multi-year, strategic funding programmes that have supported young people in England: HeadStart, Building Better Opportunities and Talent Match.

Our insight and evaluation work suggests that poor mental health amongst young people does adversely affect their access to the labour market and their ability to find quality work. From early on in our employment programmes, mental health issues have been flagged as a barrier to employment and additional measures were required to support the participants’ needs.

For example, in the Building Better Opportunities (BBO) programme early evaluations flagged mental health needs amongst participants. Respondents to the 2021 participant survey expressed how their mental health had acted as a barrier to work. Although our survey did not explicitly ask whether mental health was a challenge for participants, almost a quarter (23%, or 59 respondents) told us about their mental health needs unprompted, indicating the scale of the challenge faced for those engaging with BBO to improve employability.

Without early intervention in childhood or adolescence, the likelihood of mental health problems in adulthood increases significantly.¹ As such, one of HeadStart’s aims was to raise awareness amongst adults who work with young people. The programme helped carers, parents, guardians and other key adults to be aware of the contributing factors, triggers and signs around youth mental health and give them the tools and knowledge to help intervene and support the individual in question. For example, HeadStart Wolverhampton produced a wellbeing toolkit for schools which has been accredited by the PSHE Association. As one teacher who was involved with HeadStart explained, “Before the training I wouldn’t have had the confidence to approach a young person who was clearly distressed, but, because I’d had the training, I felt confident and the conversation flowed very naturally. The training made the difference.” ²

Person-centred support is a key theme in the BBO programme. One participant told us that they had taken part in other employment programmes but found that the interventions did not take their individual challenges into account. As a result, they had struggled to move towards work until joining BBO – the participant described how it felt that the BBO key worker cared about them, and that had made a real difference. Indeed, participants experiencing mental health barriers to work commonly flagged the importance of the keyworker role; having someone to talk to was often cited as the most helpful thing about the support they had received.

The person-centred support that BBO projects offer is improving the employment chances of thousands of young people. As of September 2021, 117,960 participants had left the programme of which 42,466 (36%) had entered employment and 37,747 (32%) had moved to education or training. In addition, BBO projects have monitored wellbeing and confidence in participants. As of March 2021, 74% reported improved confidence, motivation and self-esteem, with reduced social isolation.

Talent Match recognised that different people needed different levels of support to gain employment. The programme focused on helping young people who had been long term unemployed and faced significant and multiple barriers to employment, such as mental health, to find career opportunities. By March 2021, almost 12,000 (46%) young people secured some form of job, including nearly 4,500 (17%) who secured sustained employment or self-employment.

As well as helping young people to find work, Talent Match partnerships provided individuals with the skills and resilience needed to navigate a fulfilling career. The wellbeing of Talent Match participants was largely worse than that of the general population, but this gap, for most participants, closed during involvement on Talent Match. Most reported improved life satisfaction: 70% of those who found a job, and also 60% of those who didn’t. Interviews with young people revealed that some saw improving their wellbeing as their main priority. This highlights the importance of the integrated nature of Talent Match, which provided non-work support - including personal development, social and peer activities, and counselling - alongside employment-related support. Talent Match focused on the journey to employment and the final evaluation shows that a significant group of young people who didn’t find a job felt more ‘work ready’ after taking part in Talent Match.

Based on the learnings from these programmes, we have found the following to be important when supporting young people to improve their mental health and employability:

• Support that not only focuses on preventing or treating mental health problems, but also on improving young people’s wellbeing.
• Long term funding with the ability to retain the participant on a programme for as long as they need support.
• A holistic approach to project delivery that can support all of an individual’s needs.
• Flexible support that can change and adapt as new needs emerge. It should be tailored to the individual - one size does not fit all.
• A key worker approach - a trusted person for participants to confide in.
• Partnerships with VCSE organisations with reach into communities because they are trusted and are seen as safe places.

¹ Romeo, R., Knapp, M. and Scott, S. (2006), Economic cost of severe antisocial behaviour in children- and who pays it.

² The National Lottery Community Fund (2019), HeadStart: Building young people’s resilience to support their mental and emotional wellbeing