Nick Clegg are you listening?

You’ve pledged £1billion to get the youth of today back into employment.

It’s called The Youth contract, a bit like YTS in the 90’s where firms secured cheap labour for menial tasks. When the Conservatives came to power there was another scheme in place, tarted up a bit & called The Future Jobs Fund which Labour put in place in April 2009 when youth unemployment was at it’s highest.   On March 18th 2011 David Cameron said “The Future Jobs fund has been one of the most ineffective job schemes there’s been” He then went on to say “The really damning evidence is that it’s a six month programme, but one month after it’d finished half the people that were on it are back on the dole. It failed.” 

So you understand my utter disbelief when I hear that the Future Jobs Fund is being resurrected, in a different name of course.

This time though employers only get a wage subsidy of £2,275.00 not the £6,500 that Labour use to dish out. 

The problems will still be the same though, employers exploiting youngsters, giving them false hope, youngsters taking crap jobs for fear of losing any benefits.

The Government has panicked, it needs to play with figures, it needs to get the youth off jobseekers benefit for a while & who will cough up for it?

Extra funding for apprenticeships I totally agree with however The Youth contract is making me feel doubtful. The feedback from The Future jobs Fund wasn’t brilliant, employers just using youths & not training them in any way, there were stories of youngsters not getting paid until the funding came through, some not getting paid at all & references not given if anyone protested. Don’t get me wrong there were some successes but not enough to be writing home about.

I think Talent hubs should be created where employers can outsource their work at a preferred rate because they know it will be our unemployed youth completing it for them.

These hubs will be supervised to make sure the youngsters are getting the right help.

Now I know a hub initially won’t cover every profession, however to start with it would have receptionists, taking calls for companies when they’re unavailable, web designers, web developers, youngsters good with I.T, marketing, social media, sales, cooks in the kitchen, maintenance & whatever is needed to make the whole organisation work. Whilst the youngsters are there they would have a responsibility for making it work, setting goals & targets, they would feel like they have ownership  etc.. Whilst in the programme they would all get help re getting in front of the employer, CV writing, Interview skills etc...

The thing is this model would also generate revenue & may only need funding initially.

Of course employers would be encouraged to drop in or engage via the online talent hub site where each youngster would have a profile.

Then again I’m not PM, maybe one day!