A new youth service will allow 160 young people to engage with further education and training and gain sustainable employment.
The ‘NOW and Stepping Stones Youth Service’, funded under the Collaboration and Innovation Fund, is one of a number of the new initiatives funded by the Department for Employment and Learning to ensure the successful implementation of the Executive’s ‘Pathways to Success’ Strategy to help young people who are not in education, employment and training.
Launching the scheme, Employment and Learning Minister, Stephen Farry said: “The Collaboration and Innovation Fund has the design flexibility to allow projects like the ‘NOW and Stepping Stones Youth Service’ to personalise their provision to help the NEET group. It will help young people who have learning and communication difficulties make a successful transition into and within the labour market. I have provided over £9million to 18 projects from the community, voluntary and educational sectors to enable them to provide support to over 5,500 disadvantaged young people.”
The new Youth Service will enable young people from the Belfast and Lisburn areas to engage and re-engage with further education and training, and to gain and retain employment through participant-led transition activities such as group engagement, mentoring, assertiveness skill, health-awareness, anxiety management and enterprise training.
The Minister continued: “The employability needs of young people with learning and communication difficulties are at the heart of the Youth Service project. The integrated packages of support on offer will help them to cope effectively and prevent them returning to the NEET group. The new Youth Service is an excellent e3xample of a collaborative and innovative project and I look forward to hearing the outcomes as the project progresses.”
Chief Executive of the Youth Service’s lead partner NOW, Maeve Monaghan said: “We were delighted to receive this funding from the Department for Employment and Learning. We have designed a programme to support young people with learning and communication difficulties who we believe have lots of potential but for many different reasons have not felt able to access mainstream training and employment services.”
The Chief Executive of Stepping Stones, Paul Jennings spoke of his delight at their collaboration with NOW to form the new Youth Service.
He said: “Young people with learning difficulties in Lisburn and Belfast will have the support from our Outreach Workers to engage in a variety of new activities that will bring out the best in them, helping them to realise their full potential.”