Govt to announce £1bn Youth Contract

The Government has announced a new £1bn pot of cash to get young people into work called the 'Youth Contract'.  The idea is that they pay half the salary of someone doing an apprenticeship scheme.  So far so good.  As a country with young unemployment now topping at about 1 million people something must be done.  We can't have a generation that are so dejected with life, the world and society that they effectively drop out of view. We can't risk exasperating the gap between rich and the poor by condemning many to a life of benefits and having to be wheeling and dealing to survive.

The idea of this scheme sounds good by effectively encouraging employers to take a chance on hiring the young. But there are a few things about the scheme that do worry me:

- Where are the safeguards that the training will be up to an adequate standard - internships, apprenticeships and the like do sometimes have a reputation for effectively offering employers cheap labour that they can flog to death for a certain period. Once that person is burnt out bring they  can simply bring in the next ones.  Don't get me wrong though, there are good schemes and firms out there and people who move onto fulfilling roles.

- If you drop out we stop benefits, if you do such and such we stop benefits - Taking my point first point above. If through no fault of yours you end up with a bad placement and for legitimate reasons decide to quit you would not be entitled to benefits.  This again smacks of the Government  using what in many ways seems like a good scheme as a way to massage the job figures down.  If you sign up and then discover it's not working for you you are well and truly scuppered.  I do admit that there are work shy people out there who do not want to work so making sure that they do not just drop out as they can't be bothered is important too.

I have two nephews aged 26 and 24.  I have helped them rewrite CVs and shared my knowledge about job hunting. The thing that struck me was that no one was helping them.  No one said what was best practice  or showed them how to draft a captivating CV that hits an employers button.  A CV with one word bullet points tells me nothing about what you can do for an employer.  With my tips my nephew started to get lots more interviews and he got a job. 

Our job centres are a mere box ticking exercise and they do not have staff with the skills to advise people properly, schemes for young people such as Connexions which helped them to find jobs in an increasingly tough market have been cut so it's no wonder youth unemployment is rising and will continue to do so. Good advice and support will help young people compete.

That Hidden Downside

I have learnt so much in the past year from  how to exercise properly; to how to arrange a funeral or how best to hunt down work and secure those elusive interviews. But sometimes something just crops up that really makes you stop and think. That thing for me was reading Stylist Magazine last week which had the most inspirational feature in it. It was a piece written by a 30 year old PR girl called Laura.  Laura has recently been diagnosed with a blood cancer called Hodgkins Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.  She has started writing a blog to capture her fight as that life threatening disease.

Of course a blog chronicling an intensely horrific treatment such as chemotherapy is humbling as you really cannot understand the impact that this hugely invasive course of treatment has on someone. But Laura's warts and all blog gives some amazing insights.

The other thing that resonated with me was the fact that Laura in the recently bought a flat, developed a successful career and as a result of that set herself up as a freelance consultant.  Her life had been going swimmingly until she had her shock diagnosis. Now she is not only having to battle cancer but also having to figure out how she is going to cope financially.  To me this showed the hidden downside of being freelance.  Unless you plan for that rainy day so if you have a period when you are cannot work - how would you survive?  Having these contingencies in place is vital or else you too could find yourself becoming unstuck.  

When my mum was ill with blood cancer she had those similar types of money concerns and to be honest really she should have been focussing on fighting the disease.  If you own a property you are not eligible for housing benefit and may get a small handout from a charity like Macmillan.  For many the bank of mum and dad or savings are just not there so what next? Laura sadly didn't get mortgage insurance as she was young carefree and healthy - if only she'd had the hindsight of a crystal ball. Let that be a lesson to us all and especially to those who are having to embark on that freelance employment route during this crazy economic times.