Can a holistic coaching and referral programme enhance well-being and employability amongst NEET youth?

Abstract

In response to high and increasing rates of youth unemployment and a growing cohort of youth who are not in employment, education and training (NEET), the Basic Package of Support (BPS) for youth was developed. It takes as its starting point that young people who are disconnected from learning and earning opportunities are often in this situation because of the multiple barriers they face, arising from the structural and multifaceted nature of poverty. Furthermore, when they try to access services to help them overcome these challenges, they experience these services as being isolating and unfriendly. The BPS set out to address these dual challenges by introducing a youth-centred programme that proactively reaches out to disconnected and discouraged NEET youth, engages them in a holistic assessment of their lives, coaches them to understand what they want to achieve in life, and actively refers them to available services and opportunities that can enable them to overcome barriers and connect them to learning and earning opportunities. Simultaneously, it engages local service providers that young people are likely to engage with, and invites them to collaborate in a Community of Practice aimed at building a stronger understanding of their role in supporting young people’s transitions to learning and earning, and at developing active problem solving and collaboration to improve service delivery to youth. The programme’s dual aims are a) to improve young people’s well-being, sense of belonging, and navigational capacity so that they are able to (re)connect to learning and earning opportunities and stay in these opportunities for longer periods of time; and b) to improve service delivery to young people in local communities so that youth no longer “fall through the cracks”, and are better supported in their transitions towards learning and earning. The programme was piloted between the beginning of 2022 and the end of 2023 in several sites in Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape. In this report we present data on the profile of young people who take up the BPS opportunity, and what their well-being, navigational capacity and employability outcomes are as they progress through the programme. We draw on qualitative and quantitative data derived from a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design that formed the basis of the monitoring and evaluation during the pilot phase. These findings demonstrate improved outcomes across several domains of well-being including self-reported quality of life, mental health and sense of support. They also show improved ability to handle stress and access to services – indicators of improved navigational capacity. Finally, we see that by the time participants have completed three coaching sessions almost 40% of them have reconnected to some form of learning or earning opportunity. The findings demonstrate that young people who take up an individualised, multifaceted coaching programme experience improvements in their lives that draw them closer to opportunity, and that indeed, two-fifths are able to make connections to learning and earning again, even after a small number of sessions with a coach. What remains to be understood is whether young people stay in these opportunities to completion, and whether the programme places them on a better footing for longer term trajectories towards sustainable work and learning. The report provides evidence of the value of individualised coaching and referrals for particularly vulnerable young people for whom more support to connect to opportunity seems to be necessary.