Earning, learning, and access to support
- Emma Anderson
Abstract
Youth exposed to high levels of adversity during childhood face major challenges in achieving normative milestones such as securing employment. Effective support holds the potential to significantly change the long-term outcomes for these youth, but there is debate about what programme components are most effective in scaffolding these youth into work. This paper presents findings from a mixed-methods longitudinal study that collected survey data for three years followed by qualitative work with a representative subgroup of youth (n = 107) for a further three years. It explores a subset of data to identify factors associated with positive employment outcomes for these youth (aged 12–17 at study entry). A particular concern was to identify factors that were amenable to intervention in order to provide professionals and policy-makers with evidence concerning the most important programme components and policy settings. Factors that made the most difference to the employment outcomes for this ethnically diverse cohort of vulnerable youth were a history of employment, employment-related skills and access to ongoing support. In addition, male gender and older age played a role in these outcomes. Commonly identified risk factors (substance use, offending) did not play a role, neither did ethnicity, family nor neighbourhood characteristics nor individual strengths. The importance of early exposure to workplaces, opportunities to develop employment skills, and access to ongoing support from at least one positive adult, are key factors for programmes supporting the employment transitions of vulnerable youth.
Introduction
While many youth ultimately make a successful transition into the workforce and assume productive, prosocial adult lives, a substantial minority approach this key transition point at a severe disadvantage (Furlong and Kelly, 2005, Miller and Porter, 2007). A range of terms have been used to describe these youth such as ‘at risk’ (Foster and Spencer, 2011, te Riele, 2006), ‘high risk’ (Cohen & Piquero, 2009) ‘marginalised’ (Shahabi et al., 2011), and ‘vulnerable’ (Frøyland, 2018, Taylor, 2009, Ward and Henderson, 2003). More recent and positive terms for these same groups of young people have included ‘opportunity youth’ (Mendelson, Mmari, Blum, Catalano, & Brindis, 2018). What the youth included in these different labels share in common are substantial challenges in making a safe transition to prosocial adult lives because of the risk burdens they have carried from childhood. The current paper follows Taylor, 2009, Ward and Henderson, 2003, Frøyland, 2018, by using the term ‘vulnerable’ to refer to the youth who participated in this research. This term draws attention to the possibility of improvement in outcomes for these youth given the provision of support that meaningfully addresses the long-term impact of the exposure to adversity that has shaped their lives (see: Section 2. Method, for discussion of inclusion criteria which details how the term vulnerable was operationalised).
The current study draws on Positive Youth Development theory (PYD). PYD has made an important contribution to the development of our understanding of how young people can develop and thrive. PYD draws on relational developmental systems metatheory, ecological systems theory and developmental contextualism (Lerner et al., 2019, Lerner et al., 1999, Neal and Neal, 2013). These larger bodies of work anchor the research in a socio-ecological perspective (Pinkerton, 2011), where development is understood to occur out of the interaction between the individual and the environment; the person-environment exchange (Overton, 2010). In relation to the population of youth who are the focus of the current study, PYD is valuable because it redefines marginalised and disadvantaged youth so that rather than problems to be fixed they are seen as resourceful, and their actions are understood as attempts to take control of their circumstances (Bottrell, 2009, Haw, 2010). For these reasons, the current research included measures that tapped into a range of domains, both resilience resources and risks.
It is generally accepted that unproblematic pathways from school to work are now the exception rather than the norm, and that heterogeneity, unpredictability, non-linearity and complexity represent contemporary adolescence (Taylor, 2011). However, with some notable exceptions, the literature on youth transitions has tended to focus upon either youth with relatively low risk exposure (such as the experiences of college graduates) or upon youth exhibiting a particular risk behaviour or a specific need (such as offending or mental health) in isolation from youth lives more broadly (see, for example, Osgood, Foster, & Courtney, 2010). Relatively little research considers the impact that a range of risks and resources available to vulnerable youth have upon their transitions into work. Yet vulnerable youth face particular challenges in securing the stable work that is critical to their capacity to successfully build productive prosocial adulthoods (Taylor, 2011). The current paper is situated within these contemporary explorations of youth transitions as complex, diverse, multi-faceted, non-linear and subject to the influence of a diverse range of factors, many of which may be beyond the direct control of the individual young person (Evans, 2002, Hardgrove et al., 2015, Taylor, 2011).
New Zealand performs poorly when compared to similar nations in terms of creating successful transition pathways into the workforce for vulnerable youth. Thus, these issues have a particular significance in this jurisdiction (McLaren, 2003). For instance, in 2018, 12.5% of youth aged 15–24 years were not in education training or employment (NEET) and this rate appears to be increasing (Statistics NZ, 2018). Youth who struggle to make the transition into the workforce have often been exposed to high levels of abuse and neglect, had regular engagement with the justice system and be more likely to have experienced mental health issues. These factors all increase the likelihood of long-term unemployment, while secure employment represents a key opportunity for their normative integration and a sense of connection to mainstream society (Benseman, 2006, Bynner and Parsons, 2002, Bynner and Schoon, 2003, Lifshitz, 2017, McLaren, 2003, Malatest, 2016, Metzler et al., 2017, Neves et al., 2018). When vulnerable young people are not able to transition well into work, there are significant societal and individual costs such as a loss of human potential, as well as increased risks of ongoing entrenched disadvantage with attendant social and economic costs to communities (Benseman, 2006, Frøyland, 2018, McLaren, 2003).
This paper reports on a subset of data from a longitudinal research programme that investigates the journeys to adulthood for a cohort of vulnerable New Zealand adolescents. This larger research programme has several linked strands that are organised around key transition themes of: educational experiences, identity and belonging, and, of relevance to the current paper, their experiences of looking for and engaging in work. Because it is well recognised that securing employment is a complex process for vulnerable adolescents, the research included factors from multiple domains (Bynner and Schoon, 2003, McLaren, 2003, Metzler et al., 2017). It seeks to understand the challenges and complexities of these journeys, the strengths and resources that youth brought to this process and the ways in which formal services assisted them. To provide a context for the research, the paper begins with a brief overview of research regarding the impact factors from individual, relational and contextual domains have upon employment outcomes for vulnerable youth, with a particular focus on factors that can be addressed through service delivery.
Individual characteristics, such as age, gender, ethnicity and parenthood status all play a role in employment outcomes and so need to be included in analyses of employment transitions of vulnerable youth and to inform the development of programmes to assist job-seeking (Bynner & Parsons, 2002). In addition to this, vulnerable youth are at a disadvantage when moving into the workforce because protective positive personal traits such as high self-esteem, determination and a positive outlook on life are undermined by exposure to adversity during childhood (Bynner & Schoon, 2003). Furthermore, even when vulnerable youth possess high levels of these positive characteristics, their employment outcomes remain poorer than those of youth from more advantaged backgrounds (Bynner & Schoon, 2003). This raises questions about where to target intervention efforts: should they focus on personality traits or upon the circumstances around youth that make it more difficult for them to sustain a positive orientation?
Employment skills-building and goal setting activities have been found to improve the employment prospects of vulnerable youth because these programme components compensate for missing educational credentials and help build confidence and a hopeful outlook which facilitates active job searching (Frøyland, 2018, Gates et al., 2018). Opportunities to engage in work also appear to help vulnerable youth formulate more ambitious aspirations than would otherwise be the case (Bynner and Schoon, 2003, Leventhall et al., 2001). The protective effect of part-time work in early adolescence may be critical for vulnerable youth where family and peers have low levels of labour market attachment (Leventhall et al., 2001). Because being unemployed substantially increases the risks of remaining unemployed, early exposure to work may be protective for vulnerable youth (Howieson & Iannelli, 2008). Employment history may thus be a valuable early indicator of the chances of finding work and highlight the need to provide workplace experiences.
There is good evidence that when vulnerable youth do complete education, their chances of finding sustainable employment improve (Howieson and Iannelli, 2008, Lifshitz, 2017, Miller and Porter, 2007, Peterson, 2011). Thus, despite the increasingly non-linear pathways from education to employment, educational credentials have the potential to be a powerful positive force in the lives of vulnerable youth. Therefore, employment support programs need to take account of the particular educational needs and aspirations of these youth (Taylor, 2011).
Individual risk behaviours such as substance use, delinquency and depression, have all been connected to poorer employment outcomes and the extant research suggests that youth with high levels of these risks face particularly acute challenges in securing and retaining jobs (McLaren, 2003). However, risk behaviours can also play a protective role. For instance, some research identifies that substance abuse can be a self-soothing strategy that enables vulnerable youth to cope, given lack of access to more prosocial coping resources (Baggio et al., 2015). Given these contradictory roles that risk behaviours may play in youth lives, the current analysis is alert to the possibility that individual risks such as law breaking and substance use may not have a straightforward relationship with employment outcomes and accordingly, a range of measures are used to capture individual risk factors.
Youth are embedded in relational networks that need to be understood when unpacking the factors that support young people’s occupational pathways. However, relational factors are relatively under-explored in research into the work-seeking experiences of vulnerable youth (Hardgrove et al., 2015). Yet positive relationships with parents are important proximal resources that can facilitate workforce transitions (Hardgrove et al., 2015). Furthermore, other relationships within youth networks also need to be considered because vulnerable youth are often made vulnerable precisely because they do not have supportive family (Foster & Spencer, 2011). Given the increasing significance of peer relationships in adolescence, it is surprising that the role of peers in the workforce transitions of vulnerable youth has not been given more attention because it has been suggested that risky behaviour by peers undermines employment opportunities (Sletten, 2011). Supportive relationships with positive non-familial adults can also facilitate pathways into employment by reducing anxiety and buffering the negative impact of issues such as rejection by potential employers, but again, these types of relationships have seldom been a focus of research (Leventhall et al., 2001, Neves et al., 2018).
In addition to emotional and material support, interpersonal relationships can also give access to, and knowledge about how to use the employment-rich networks critical to finding and maintaining a job (Bynner & Parsons, 2002). When vulnerable youth have access to these types of networks, their capacity to secure paid work with regular hours is enhanced (Galster, Santiago, & Lucero, 2014). For this reason, community-based initiatives that have strong connections to employers may play an important role in compensating for the limited networks available to vulnerable youth. Research thus needs to account for the presence and contribution that diverse relationships play in the movement of these youth into work (Bynner and Schoon, 2003, Lifshitz, 2017).
There are well-recognised links between neighbourhood characteristics and outcomes for vulnerable youth (Fauth et al., 2007, Galster et al., 2014). For instance, living in an unsafe neighbourhood is related to an increased risk of long-term unemployment (Osgood et al., 2010). Neighbourhoods with high levels of deprivation and risk erode optimism and foster hopelessness, which undermines youth’s capacity to actively seek work (Swisher & Warner, 2013). When neighbourhoods contain few opportunities for job advancement, youth become locked into ‘fragile careers’ based on restricted networks that are circumscribed by locality (Walther, Stauber, & Pohl, 2005, p. 231). While living in unsafe neighbourhoods can diminish young people’s aspirations, these neighbourhoods can also engender a strong sense of belonging, bringing with them positive identity resources that youth carry with them into adulthood (Peterson, 2011). From an intervention perspective then, it should not be assumed that simply moving vulnerable youth to a safer and better-resourced locality will solve their employment challenges and research needs to be attentive to the possibly paradoxical roles that neighbourhoods might play for vulnerable youth (Fauth, Leventhall & Brooks-Gunn, 2007).
Formal services can play a key role in work transitions by opening up employment-rich networks and providing experiences of prosocial adult relationships (Frøyland, 2018, Taylor, 2011). However, while numerous programmes provide transitional assistance, not many result in improved employment outcomes (Gates et al., 2018, Lifshitz, 2017). Intervention components that have been found to be effective include: developing social and work-related skills, interpersonal support and providing for basic needs such as food and shelter, as well as hands-on work experience (Frøyland, 2018, Gates et al., 2018, Lifshitz, 2017).
While the evidence concerning the factors that facilitate successful transitions of vulnerable youth into employment is limited, the preceding brief overview highlights the need to understand the impact upon employment prospects of factors across young people’s lives, and to account for the associations between these factors. Against this background, the investigation had two main aims: to use longitudinal survey data to examine the extent to which individual (risks and strengths), relational (with parents/caregivers, other adults and peers), and contextual factors (neighbourhood safety and service involvement) contribute over time to full time employment for a sample of vulnerable youth; and to draw the lived employment transition experiences of vulnerable youth into this analysis to generate a rich and detailed contextual understanding of the patterns identified in the analysis of the survey data.
For the survey data, we hypothesized that individual factors, relational factors, and contextual factors would all be significantly associated with employment goals, employment skills and full-time employment at the bivariate level. At the multivariate level, however, it was hypothesized that a much smaller set of factors would be associated with employment outcomes.
Section snippets
Research design
The data featured in this investigation was drawn from the the Youth Transitions Research Programme, a large, longitudinal, mixed-methods study of the transition to adulthood for a group of vulnerable New Zealand adolescents. All of these youth faced this transition without many of the supports and resources required to find work. The research, which commenced in 2009, was approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Committee prior to any data collection. Consistent with the approach of
Changes in employment outcome measures over time (see Tables 2a and 2b)
Across the three surveys, the employment rate and levels of employment skills increased significantly. Scores on the employment goals measure remained relatively static.
While the increase in the employment rate and in employment skills may be due in some part to age-related changes in the sample, these changes are an indicator of positive outcomes for this group. Alongside this positive result, however, by the third survey 35% of the young people remained unemployed. This compares with an
Discussion
The purpose of this paper is to add to our understanding of the factors that increase the likelihood that vulnerable youth will be able to secure employment as they move into adulthood. Within this broad goal, a central concern is to locate factors that are amenable to influence through service delivery. Based on the literature, it was expected that a broad range of factors comprising individual, relational and contextual dimensions would influence employment outcomes (DeLuca et al., 2015,
Conclusion
The lessons for service provision from this study include placing an emphasis upon supporting youth to create enduring relationships with positive adults who can facilitate access to the labour market. These are critical to supporting youth through the uncertain and challenging process of trying to find a place in the workforce and then of adjusting to the realities of regular work. Such relationships provide networks, stability, learning and the encouragement to keep on trying when things go ...