Young Person's Guarantee: update report March 2023

Executive Summary

Substantial progress has been made since the Young Person's Guarantee was launched. Most notably:

• Advancing equality and inclusion have been central to the Young Person's Guarantee and we have worked closely with partners to deliver on commitments set out in our published Equality Action Plan;
• We published our Measurement and Evaluation Framework, which underpins our understanding of how the Young Person's Guarantee is working for young people;
• An evaluation of the Young Person's Guarantee's investment in No One Left Behind has been commissioned as part of the wider evaluation of this work and will be published later this year;
• Circa 300 Developing the Young Workforce School Coordinators are in place to enhance employer-education engagement, particularly in the senior phase and with a focus on those furthest away from the labour market;
• The Developing the Young Workforce programme has been further streamlined through the 'Developing the Young Workforce Futures' review, with governance structures reshaped and reporting of activity simplified;
• Since December 2020, the Youth Leadership Panel, a diverse group of 30 young volunteers supported by Young Scot, continue to contribute their views to shape the work of the Young Person's Guarantee;
• We published the Careers Advice review and recommendations in February 2022, which set out a series of measures to better deliver for young people, to ensure they get the right advice at the right time;
• The School Leavers Toolkit was launched on the 30th May 2022 and signposts young people to a range of practical information resources on topics including rights, finances, housing, health and wellbeing, to support and empower young people as they transition to post-school life.
• The Apprenticeship Employer Grant (AEG) was introduced to encourage more employers to take on Modern or Graduate Apprentices, or upskill their existing workforce;
• We enhanced support for Adopt an Apprentice and the Apprentice Transition Plan to support Modern and Graduate apprentices;
• We have worked with employers on the '5 Asks' so that they can demonstrate what they will do to support young people;
• Over 800 employers have signed up, providing in excess of 22,000 opportunities;
• We have allocated over £4 million of funding to third sector organisations in financial year 2022-23 to support those young people who are hardest to reach;
• Over 8900 young people have been supported into positive destinations by the Our Future Now and Discovering Your Potential programmes, delivered by Inspiring Scotland and the Young Person's Consortium respectively.
• Over 100 young people have been supported into positive destinations by Project Scotland.
• We launched the Formal Volunteering Framework (Formal Volunteering Framework – Scottish Government website to support employers and partners to embed skills and development within formal volunteering opportunities.

Third Sector Case Study – Barnardo's

LMR is a young person who has been supported by the Discovering Your Potential (DYP) programme for almost a year now. The tailored and flexible nature of DYP has helped LMR to build her confidence and realise her potential while having continued 1-1 support as and when needed.

A weekly meeting with her Project Worker allows LMR to use this time to talk through any issues from work or in her personal life. LMR is very open about issues with her mental health and how her full-time job and past affect this. These weekly meetings provide an outlet and a non-biased support system to help LMR rationalise situations and set steps to move forward.

Initially, LMR felt that she would be unable to remain in her job and did not feel ready to go back into education due to her mental health. Not only has DYP and the weekly meetings helped LMR to communicate and regulate her emotions better, but it has given her a new perspective on life and what she could achieve. LMR has now managed to sustain her job and she has built up her confidence enough to start a degree with the Open University.

Therefore, it can be seen from this one example just how beneficial Discovering Your Potential is and can be to more young people like LMR.