Breaking barriers to employment and education

PROJECT

Spear Programme

PURPOSE

To help 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neet) overcome barriers to re-entering work or learning

FUNDING

The programme receives funding from a variety of individual and corporate donors, trusts and foundations. This included £775,000 from Impetus from 2018 to 2022 and £76,000 from State Street Foundation in 2022

BACKGROUND

The Spear Programme is a coaching scheme delivered by charity Resurgo. It was launched in 2004 by Resurgo chief executive Jo Rice, a former executive coach in financial services, and entrepreneur and Church of England minister Tom Jackson. Their aim was to test if executive coaching methods could help young people not in education, employment or training return to work or education and stay there. The programme began in Hammersmith, London, and today operates from 11 centres in London, Brighton, Bristol, Leeds and Bournemouth. So far, 8,500 young people have enrolled. Resurgo plans to support 1,000 more in 2023.

ACTION

More than 10 per cent of people aged 16 to 24 – an estimated 724,000 – are Neet according to Department for Education figures for July to September 2022. The Spear Programme aims to address the reasons young people become Neet through group coaching over six weeks with sessions taking place three hours per day, five days a week. This is followed by 12 months of career support.

Spear representatives at job centres recruit young people to the programme or people can self-refer. To be eligible they must be facing at least one barrier to employment such as having been on free school meals or growing up in care. “Most participants have three or more barriers,” says Rice.

Coaches trained to International Coach Federation standards deliver the training in church halls to groups of 12 to 15. Each centre runs six programmes a year on a rolling basis. Rather than just covering CV-writing or job interview skills, the coaches aim to empower young people to change their own futures.

The approach is based on the work of psychiatrist Eric Berne whose transactional analysis theory suggests people operate in three “ego states”, or “voices”: a parent, child or adult voice. He observed a person operating in a parent voice triggers a child response while someone operating in a child voice triggers a parent response.

Rice says this dynamic is commonplace when young people engage with statutory services and leads to “an unhelpful spiral of dependency”.

The Spear Programme aims to help young people find their “adult voice”, he explains.

Coaches might achieve this through sessions on victim mentality. They show young people clips of characters on television and ask them to analyse their relationship dynamics. Rice says this helps young people understand life is about “how we respond to things that happen to us” rather than simply “what happens”.

Another training technique is a debate entitled: “Everything you do, you choose to do.” The group splits to argue for or against the motion. “It helps young people understand they have authority over their lives,” says Rice.

On day two, each participant is asked to give a presentation about “what you want your legacy to be”. Rice says this can be very challenging but the exercise aims to show everyone in the group how to give positive feedback. “Often young people are just not schooled in saying anything nice to each other,” she says. “We all grow when people encourage us, and young people particularly when they hear it from their peers.”

At the end of the six-week programme, the group takes part in an online hiring event with potential employers. Resurgo has a network of more than 40 organisations, including Nando's, Leon and Harvey Nichols. After a group interview, employers can request a second meeting with a participant. Rice says that at a recent event, 56 out of 80 young people received callbacks.

Coaches stay in weekly contact with each participant for a year after the training ends. Rice says the ongoing support means job retention rates are high. “If they tell us: ‘My boss is a nightmare, I need to quit’, we can help them work that out,” she says.

The drop-out rate from the programme is 20 per cent. Coaches will ask participants to leave if they are disrupting training sessions. However, coaches invite them to return in the future.

“One guy who we asked to leave because he was misbehaving then came back for the next cohort,” says Rice. “He said: ‘No one's ever said no to me before. I've had such a difficult life that no one will ever turn me down.’” Rice says it is better for young people to “blow up” while they are on the course than when they are in work. “That way we're there to help them navigate that,” she says.

OUTCOME

A study of the Spear Programme was published by the Department for Work and Pensions Employment Data Lab in November 2022. This compared the outcomes of 954 Spear Programme participants aged 18 to 27 between 2015 and 2017 with a group of similar young people who did not do the programme.

It found that in the Spear group, the average number of weeks young people spent in employment within the two years was 49, compared with 39 weeks in the comparison group.

When it considered the length of time people were inactive, the average number of weeks among those on the programme was nine, compared with 12 for the comparison group.

At the start of the study, 72 per cent of people in both groups were considered Neet. But one year later, the proportion within the Spear group had reduced to 40 per cent, while the proportion of Neet young people in the comparison group was higher at 48 per cent.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Resurgo is piloting a fast-track version of the programme in Preston and Cheltenham, which offers four weeks of coaching rather than six. The charity is testing the model after it found outcomes were similar during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it had to reduce its coaching hours and deliver the programme online. “We're testing whether we can run a programme that is significantly lower cost and could therefore scale-up much faster,” says Rice. Resurgo also hopes to launch new Spear centres in Glasgow, Cardiff, Norwich and Birmingham.

EXPERIENCE
SPEAR PROGRAMME ‘AN OPPORTUNITY WORTH TAKING’ FOR ETHAN

In 2021, 21-year-old Ethan (pictured) from Brighton was out of education and employment. He'd had a difficult start in life. His two older brothers died by suicide when he was young, leaving him alone with his mother. He was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, bullied at school, and excluded after fighting a teacher. A change of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic meant he received lower A-level grades than expected and missed out on a university place. His mother suffered a breakdown. His girlfriend left him. “I was just drinking, staying in my room for pretty much the whole year, until Spear,” he says.

Ethan met a Spear coach at a job centre when applying for benefits. “She just came across as really friendly – I hadn't experienced that for a long time,” he says. He joined the programme but his erratic sleep made attending every day challenging. “Spear would phone me up to ask how I was doing – let me know the session was on that day,” he says. “They went the extra mile.”

He admits he didn't think much of the programme at first. “But when they started explaining the plan and how they were actually going to put some effort into helping me find work, I thought there was an opportunity worth taking,” he says.

By week three, Ethan was an enthusiastic attendee. Before the training period ended, he secured a job as a kitchen porter through Resurgo's contacts.

Today he is studying a cyber security degree at the University of Brighton. Spear coaches helped him make this transition during the 12-month support period.

Ethan, now 22, says the experience with Spear was empowering. “There's no point giving you a CV if you don't have the will to use it,” he says. “The most important thing Spear gives you is that will.”

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