Reaching without outreaching: A comparative policy study of EU member states policy agenda on youth unemployment

Abstract

Youth unemployment is a global issue, with supranational actors calling for policy responses, including early interventions such as outreach. This article examines how EU member states have translated the EU youth guarantee (YG) recommendation, focusing on early interventions in the form of outreach. Combining quantitative content analysis with corpus linguistics, we examined the YG implementation plans of 19 EU member states having differing institutional conditions, comparing if and how they have incorporated outreach in their policy agenda. Overall we found very little outreach in the YG‐plans. In the outreach described, guidance and information on education and labour market efforts dominate, whereas social work and local level community work is largely absent. We found type of outreach to be related to institutional conditions. Our results also imply that getting member states to commit to early interventions such as outreach requires that the EU stress this issue with greater emphasis.

Outreach to farmworkers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Although acknowledged as an intervention method, the terms “street work” and “outreach” are often used interchangeably ( Andersson, 2013 ; Szeintuch, 2015 ). Social work outreach targets specific populations, including the homeless ( Grymonprez et al, 2020 ; Kydra & Compton, 2009 ; Szeintuch, 2015 ; Ungpakorn & Rae, 2020 ); drug users ( Korf et al, 1999 ; Needle et al, 2004 ; Oldeide et al, 2020 ); sex workers ( Gerassi & Howard, 2018 ; Saldanha & Parenteau, 2013 ); individuals coping with mental illness ( Rowe et al, 2015 ); and unemployed youth ( Andersson & Minas, 2021 ). However, the profession's current emphasis on direct outreach for such vulnerable populations as well as advocacy for coordinated service provision for them is not as strong as it was in the past.…”

Conceptualising service integration for inclusive activation: Exploring transferal and translation of models from health care

“…When translated into the domain of inclusive activation, the system level of the RMIC model implies, for instance, that labour market policies for youth could be (more) aligned with education policies as part of the national implementation of the reinforced Youth Guarantee (Andersson & Minas, 2021). Organisational integration could be translated such that organisations providing labour market services could make formal agreements regarding access to health services, such as psychiatric centres, or form knowledge networks with the police, schools and the criminal justice system in case of prevalent youth delinquency in a particular area.…”

How can community-based (re)engagement initiatives meet the needs of ‘NEET’ young people? Findings from the theory gleaning phase of a realist evaluation in Sweden

“…However, despite efforts made by European governments [ 7 ], there is a lack of knowledge about what works to (re)engage ‘NEET’ young people in formal studies or paid work [ 8 ]. Considering the heterogeneity of ‘NEETs’ [ 9 ] and the fact that local outreach initiatives has been largely overlooked in national YG implementations [ 10 ], this lack of evidence is especially salient for subgroups who face complex challenges in their school-to-work transitions and for whom multi-component and contextualised, rather than singular or standardised, support may be central [ 11 – 14 ].…”