A Job isn’t Enough for NEETs with Barriers

There’s a gulf between where many NEET young people are and where employers need them to be so that they can thrive in a job. The UK must find ways to bridge that gulf – just creating jobs isn’t the answer.

It’s a chilly, grey morning in early March, and around a dozen young people are sitting in a semi-circle inside a church hall, eyes down. 

Most of these young people are struggling to look the coach in the eye. For some, it was a challenge even to leave the house.  

That number includes Jake, from York, and Rebecca, from Preston, who had both dropped out of college because of the state of their mental health. Rebecca felt “like I had failed” and saw no future career for herself. 

These young people are by no means the exception. As Alan Milburn highlighted in his interim report, the rise in the numbers of NEET young people reporting poor mental health is stark.  
 
“There is no singular explanation [for the UK’s NEET number rising]. But there is one stand-out change. Over the past decade, the proportion who say they are NEET due to a work-limiting health condition has increased by 70%. The proportion of disabled NEETs citing mental health as their primary condition has almost doubled to more than 4 in 10.”   

The Health Foundation also explored this 70% increase recently – highlighting that the proportion of NEETs reporting a work-limiting health condition reached 44% in 2025 (up from 26% in 2015), with the rise primarily driven by mental health conditions. 

As we see at Spear, having mental health challenges (2 in 5 Spear trainees last year) is typically combined with other barriers such as fewer than 5 GCSEs (nearly half Spear trainees) or having experience of social services or care (1 in 3). Last year, the average trainee had 3.5 of such barriers. And as they accumulate, they have a compound effect. This means it’s even harder for a young person to feel that work is a place for them.  

Research by Impetus on this compounding effect found that young people from low socio-economic backgrounds, who also have low qualifications and have SEND are almost three times more likely to be NEET than the average. 

When a young person is NEET for even 6 months, their wellbeing starts to suffer, according to a study by the King’s Trust. Young people can end up trapped in a cycle where poor mental health makes it harder for them to get and sustain work, and being out of work makes their mental health deteriorate further.  

The support gap 

There are multiple and complex reasons for the current “crisis of opportunity” for young people. But among them is the lack of effective support for young people who have barriers to work such as poor mental health. 

The government has so far focused on supply-side interventions such as hiring grants and job placements. There appears to be an attitude of “If you build it, they will come.” 

But, as Grace Lordan, Associate Professor in Behavioural Science at London School of Economics, succinctly observes in an LSE blog, “A hiring subsidy will not help a 19-year-old who is too anxious to leave the house.” 

There is clear evidence from the Youth Futures Foundation that NEET young people who feel far from the world of work can benefit from having a trusted adult to walk alongside them and help them believe in their own potential.  

We believe this should be someone who cares enough to challenge as well as support; a skilled, trusted adult who can help them understand what it is to be work-ready. That means coaching them in the skills that employers want: being able to present yourself well in a job interview, communicating professionally, dressing for the office, being able to do small talk, even. Milburn said employers’ biggest complaint to him was about young people not being “work ready”. We believe work-readiness can and should be measured. 

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has committed in the National Youth Strategy to funding training for more trusted adults. But to tackle the NEET crisis, at least some of them need to support young people to become ready for work. 

We believe that if Jobcentre work coaches were trained to coach young people so that they felt more agency over their own future, so that they understood that they do have choices, this would result in better outcomes. Currently, that conversation is typically 10-15 minutes of compliance checks.  

And if work coaches had proper data on the quality of support services to which they refer young people – including data on how work-ready they are when they finish – this would ensure no-one was wasting time and money on services that don’t really help.  

Several work coaches have told us that they don’t have this type of data, so they can’t compare support services, and have no incentive to even consider this. 

Having a trusted adult is particularly important for those who are beyond the reach of Jobcentre work coaches – the “hidden NEETs”. 

Support that is tailored, evidence-based and involves a relationship with a trusted adult has a good chance of bridging the gulf for those who are feeling stranded.  

This was what we submitted to the Milburn review, informed by our experience at Spear; we look forward to seeing his recommendations later this year.

By Iona Ledwidge, CEO of Spear