Specialist internships designed to secure work for young people with special educational needs should be put on "turbocharge" to help tackle the growing youth jobs crisis, a government review is to propose.
Supported internships key to tackling joblessness
Alan Milburn, who is leading a review of young people and work, said supported internships should be scaled up to combat "devastating" joblessness rates for young people with a learning disability, autism or mental illness.
Nationally, as few as 5% of some groups of young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) move into permanent jobs. However, employment rates among those who complete supported internship schemes can be as high as 70%.
Nearly 1 million young people Neet
Nearly 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are classified as Neet (not in employment, education or training), a 10-year high that Milburn – a former minister in the Tony Blair government – has said represents a moral crisis and is economically unsustainable.
In May, his first report warned that Britain risked a 25% rise in the number of Neets to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action. Central to the recent growth of Neets is an increase in young people diagnosed at school with neurodevelopmental conditions or mental illness who do not make the transition into work, leaving them at high risk of becoming economically inactive.
Milburn dismisses 'snowflake generation' myths
Milburn said the UK had to move away from the idea that people with a diagnosis were unable to work. They can work, he said. "The question is: are the opportunities there and is the support there?
"Supported internships have got such an effective track record. With the best ones around 70% of the people on them end up in paid employment. In my view we have to turbocharge support – and at the moment the system is not set up to do that."
Milburn dismissed "myths" about 18- to 24-year-olds being a "snowflake generation", saying: "The problem isn't shortage of effort on the part of young people. It's a shortage of opportunities, jobs, support."
He added: "There are two views about [the rise in youth ill health]. You can either say it's fake or you can decide its real. It's a real phenomenon. So we've got to deal with it and we have got to adjust our systems to deal with it."
Early identification and internship success
The Guardian recently reported that English primary schools could be required to identify children at risk of leaving education at 16 without finding a job as part of the Milburn review.
"The warning signs are there from a very early, early age," he told the newspaper. "You know, frankly from preschool.
"So, definitely primary schools should be identifying children who are at risk of being Neet. And secondary schools and other services should be intercepting, intervening, supporting and helping those young people to get on a different path."
The year-long internships provide tailored onsite work experience and job coaching for 16- to 24-year-olds with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) who face high barriers to the job market. Employers involved include the NHS, Asda and Amazon.
Callum Beeston, a 20-year-old from Doncaster who has autism, recently completed a supported internship at Amazon with job coach support from Aspirations Doncaster. This month he started a full-time job there as a warehouse operative, and has been praised for his work from his bosses.
Beeston said his family's expectations of him finding work after he finished school were low and he was "unsure what to do next". His grandmother used to say she would leave her will to him because she was worried he would never get work. "In the last 12 months I've become a very confident young fella," he said.
Kim Patterson, the finance director at Aspirations Doncaster, said school-based ECHP support often "drops off a cliff" once students leave. Some autistic young people find it hard to manage job applications and interviews, and can struggle to adapt to work routines without specialist support.
Capacity and funding concerns
In England there are just 4,500 supported internships. About 48% of supported interns found paid work, according to an official evaluation published this year by the Department for Education, although some internship providers report job success rates as high as 70%.
Milburn said capacity shortages meant there was no guarantee a young person with Send could access a supported internship in their local area. He believed that while the model worked it lacked the resources to be delivered at scale, and there was low awareness of the scheme among parents, employers and schools.
He was tight-lipped on how such an expansion might be paid for, with fears funding might be taken from young people's disability benefits. His final recommendations are expected to be delivered to the government in the autumn.
Milburn said the system was geared too much towards paying health and disability benefits and not enough towards supporting young people to enter the job market.
"If you are a young person today and you apply and get a health and disability benefit, there's a 50% chance that in 15 years' time you will still be eligible. You'll still be out of work. That is neither a good outcome, frankly, nor is it a progressive cause," he said.
