What can government guarantee for young people?
Getting young people working
Earlier this year the government announced the ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper. This was a multi-departmental initiative led by the Department for Work and Pensions. The plan included an announcement of 16 Trailblazers. Eight of these were 'Inactivity Trailblazers' to help disadvantaged people, and particularly those with limiting health conditions, to participate in paid employment. The other eight were Youth Guarantee Trailblazers which are now running in eight Combined Authority areas, with a share of £45m. They are testing ways to identify young people most at risk of falling out of education, employment or training and matching them up to local training or job opportunities.
A brief history of youth guarantees
This isn't the first time that UK government policies have offered employment guarantees to young people – but it is the first time for well over a decade during which time unemployment and inactivity among young people have been rising – currently there are 987,000 16-24 years who are NEET (Office for National Statistics, 2025).
Established in 2008 in England, the September Guarantee is a guarantee of an offer of an appropriate place in post-16 education or training for every young person completing compulsory education. It has remained in place since the participation age was raised to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015. The September Guarantee was intended to reduce the number of young people categorised as NEET (not in education, employment or training). Under duties prescribed in the Education and Skills Act (2008) Local Authorities remain responsible for this process, working with schools and colleges across their area and tracking destinations of 16 and 17-year olds. Data is collected using the National Client Caseload Information System (NCCIS) reported to the Department for Education.
Later, in the 2009 Budget a Young Person’s Guarantee was announced. Led by the DWP with both cross-departmental and regional government support, this guaranteed all 18 to 24 year olds reaching six months unemployment, the offer of a job, training or work experience. While the guarantee component of this policy was dropped with the change of government in 2011, the DWP through Jobcentre Plus maintain a Youth Offer which comprises three strands: Youth Employment Programme, Youth Hubs, and Youth Employability Coaches. These are available to Universal Credit customers aged 18 to 24 years.
These initiatives were a response to the impact of rising unemployment that disproportionately affected young people and provided a clear statement of intent to prioritise and support them.
Similar schemes were also prevalent across Europe. In the mid 2010s there was the European Youth Guarantee Initiative which was agreed by all European Union member states to ensure that 'all young people under the age of 25 who lose their job or do not find work after leaving school should receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months'. Achieving this Guarantee was challenging and progress varied between countries, but it was an important statement of policy intent.
What do the Youth Guarantee Trailblazers guarantee?
We've reviewed public documents to understand the focus of the eight trailblazer programmes. Some are aimed at young people with specific challenges—like care leavers, those with mental health issues, or those with special educational needs and disabilities. Others focus on age groups (such as Year 13 students) or geographic areas (like rural communities). Many programmes support multiple groups. The types of support vary and include mental health services, paid work experience, career guidance, training, and advocacy. Several programmes also use a mix of these approaches.
Just like the Guarantees of over a decade ago, the Trailblazers:
- Are designed to support young people who would otherwise be out of employment, education or training. NEET figures have fluctuated over the years but the fact of young people failing to enter the labour market is persistent.
- Combine a range of different measures including training, access to work programmes and personalised support. Services are locally tailored and bring together key providers including Jobcentre Plus, training providers, community organisations and National Careers Service delivery partners.
- Likely will be measured against a set of metrics including reduction of the number or rate of NEET young people in their area, as well as access to sustained jobs or training. Certainly all the Trailblazers that we reviewed want to improve the quality and use of NCCIS data as part of their programmes.
But the new Trailblazers are also different to those launched in the 2000s:
- The delivery infrastructure has changed. Trailblazers are delivered through Combined Authorities. These authorities operate at different geographic scales - working at sub-regional level and in a complicated geography where boundaries of relevant delivery partners may not be fully coterminous; with partners who are often in competition for scarce funding resources; and at a time when services that were formerly available to young people through the National Careers Service are in flux.
- Funding is also a significant difference. £5m per Combined Authority is significant but it has to be spent within a year and, while it is clear there is the intention to roll these out nationally, there is no commitment that this level of funding will be continued. By contrast the Future Jobs Fund (part of the 2009 Young Person’s Guarantee) had access to £1bn.
- Their focus is on providing better “coordination, engagement and accountability” across the existing employment support, education and training on offer to young people. This includes involving young people by gathering their views and including them in decision-making and governance. This provides a welcome addition to the policy landscape but also one that needs careful support and considered implementation to ensure it benefits everyone involved.
- The trailblazers will also test new forms of support and outreach for young people who need it most, including those facing both mental ill-health and other long term health conditions. There were 94,000 18-24-year-olds in 2012 who were not working due to ill health. In 2022 this number had risen to 185,000 – almost one-in-four (23 per cent) workless young people were not working because of ill health, up from less than one-in-ten (8 per cent) in 2012 (Resolution Foundation, 2023).
- Unlike earlier iterations, they are focussed on 18-21 year olds rather than extending to all young people under the age of 25 years. This also contrasts with similar services in other countries where specialist employment support is provided for young people up to the age of 25 or, in some cases, 30 years old (Gatsby Foundation, 2025).
- Some trailblazers are working with employers to ensure that their provision addresses labour market failure on both the supply and the demand side, although the scale and extent of this aspect of the programmes is unclear.
Ultimately the trailblazers are not yet associated with any national policy guarantees. They represent an approach to building policy insight from local experimentation and delivery. Consequently they emphasise the importance of learning lessons to improve outcomes for young people. Evaluation is clearly an important component with each trailblazer commissioning their own evaluations with learning partners and DWP commissioning an overarching evaluation of trailblazers.
What might we learn from the Trailblazers?
The Combined Authority-led trailblazers should offer reflections to inform:
- Better integration of youth policy between different government departments. We have the DCMS Youth Guarantee, the DWP Youth Guarantee Trailblazer and their wider Youth Offer, and the DfE September Guarantee data, and also a DCMS Youth Guarantee (a promise made in 2022 that by 2025, every young person in England would have access to regular clubs and activities, adventures away from home, and/or volunteering opportunities). Combined Authorities are being tasked to co-ordinate these agendas in their local areas and it would be good to see something similar being done nationally – and we expect to see this in the forthcoming National Youth Strategy.
- Better integration of existing services for young people looking for jobs or training so that however they connect with support services, they are placed on the right pathway for their needs. This requires effective co-ordination, shared data, clear responsibilities and effective referral.
- Better data. Including better information captured through the NCCIS, and other real-time data for delivery partners and referral purposes, and also, insights into how young people experience services, what they need and what makes a positive difference.
- A clear focus on supporting young people’s transitions. Including moving through education to training, further education, and higher education, work experience, temporary jobs, and quality jobs. This focus is driven by an ambition that all young people will fully realise their potential by participating in the labour market with a good start to their working lives.
Ultimately, and in line with the Youth Employment Group, we hope the Trailblazers will blaze a trail for a national policy with multi-departmental support and a clearly articulated youth guarantee.