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Your know your in trouble when you're reduced to an acronym... just ask any NEET BAMER

N.E.E.T. = Young person Not in Education Employment or Training.

There are currently up to a million ‘NEETS’ in the UK aged under 25, and around 200,000 of those are between the ages of 16 and 18 (one in ten 16 – 18 year olds)

Nearly half of them have an excuse and a note from their mum, they’re either travelling, volunteering, at her majesty’s leisure, seriously ill or have a child.

Which leaves over 100,000 16 – 18 year olds (mainly boys) with no officially understood ‘barrier’ preventing them from work, college or some kind of training.

And nobody officially knows what they’re doing, just what they’re not doing.

That’s the equivalent of a hundred army Battalions, which in army terms could only be commanded by a Field Marshall.

Is there a Field Marshall ready to sort the lot of them out? Sadly, not. There are lots of conferences about it though.

Finding a NEET Solution, was one of the good ones, organized by the Westminster Education Forum with a selection of wise and informed people speaking... and me.

Business leaders have been calling the NEET crisis ‘deeply worrying’ and I thought it would be good to see who was coming…

But depressingly there were just 4 delegates not from education or training providers.

I think the problem with the term NEET is that it immediately frames everything in the negative, defining someone by what they are NOT, rather than what a person might become.

Lets take a look at an 18-year-old NEET from Croydon, who just a few years ago had no idea what to do with his life…

How depressing!

Or for better examples take Patrick, Mervin and Dan, or any three young men who Livity has worked with recentlywho were NEET and all from the same area and background.

A one size fits all formula doesn’t have the sophistication or scope to understand the individual challenges these lads faced, or any chance of reflecting the reality of each of their situations, or be able to apply real, effective and cost efficient solutions.

The broad brush of the NEET title feeds into the constant stereotyping of young people that adds to our fear and inaction.

The BBC report that NEETS are 20% more likely to commit a crime! The statistics and percentages are consistently alarming! Yet we never arrive at the real life stories of how these kids got here, and how they’ll get out.

At Livity, where we work with young people every day, we’ve often talked about a Purpose Curve, as a short hand for trying to establish where someone is at, so that we can create and provide the right level of support and stability, to help move an individual forward within the context of their life.

It’s not scientific but at least it’s not about limitations, and what people are not, instead it’s about positive potential and purpose.

I certainly don’t have a neat NEET solution, but I have learnt a few things along the way, that help me when we’re creating projects and programs that work:

1. We have to get over the term ‘hard to reach’, young people from the groups in danger, actually move a lot less distance than most young people, limitations in life are mirrored in their geography, you just have to go to them.

2. We need to be honest earlier, as much as all children are all our children and we need to accept responsibility for them all, it’s also clear which children need more support. Primary school teachers can point with frightening accuracy at the 6 year olds who are going to end up NEET, intervention earlier would make major savings later.

3. We need to link it all towards meaning. If that’s employment then it’s got to be real. It doesn’t matter if it’s creative, artistic, manufacturing, financial, legal, employment, we need to think about it filling the soul as well as the bank account. Work is rarely just about the money, but who’s telling anyone that if and the employers aren’t even in the room. The system that’s being rejected is an irrelevant one for a young man who can make more in a month than most graduates can in a year.

There are many brilliant people working towards a neat NEET solution, and whilst I don’t like all the terms we have to use, I’m confident we can succeed, because I know many of those people focused on the solution do not view children as what they are not, but as limitless potential that deserves the same chances as everyone else.

This blog was also published at http://samconniff.wordpress.com/