News Insight: Advice and guidance - Guided through the tough times

Information, advice and guidance services have rarely been so crucial. The unemployment rate is at its highest for almost a decade. Newspaper headlines warn of rising youth unemployment. Jobs for university graduates are in decline, prompting fears that less qualified young people will be pushed to the bottom of the labour market.

Government measures promise to safeguard young people from the worst effects of the recession by preparing them better for work. These include more apprenticeships, diplomas for 14- to 19-year-olds, plus a higher school leaving age.

The government is also conducting a review into information, advice and guidance services for young people, due to report in the spring.

In theory, better informed young people will be more likely to stay in education and training and be more employable long-term.

But the number of young people not in education, employment and training has remained persistently high since the 1990s.

Last week, Steve Hoy, the co-chair of the newly formed National Connexions Network, pledged to support young people through the economic downturn.

"The network will support young people around the economy and around the advent of new opportunities for young people, such as the diploma," he said.

So what are the key challenges facing the information, advice and guidance professionals?

JULIE CHAMBERS - Work-based learning apprenticeship tutor, Rathbone centre in Leicester

What do you do? I work with young people who are struggling to find work. The idea is that we find them work-based apprenticeships in retail. The young people are trained in the same way as any paid member of staff would be and the hope is that they'll be offered employment by the end of their placement.

Is the credit crunch affecting your work? At the moment specialist retailers are saying they won't offer work-based training placements. They don't want to take on people who don't have the right skills in case it damages sales.

High street retailers are cutting back. They still want to take young people on, but they're telling me it's less likely that they'll be able to offer full-time employment at the end of the placements. The chances of that are now very slim.

What needs to change? The government needs to invest more money in work-based learning. Instead of paying young people the education maintenance allowance (EMA) to do an apprenticeship, the government should subsidise employers to pay apprentices about £80 a week. They need to cut a better deal with employers. Getting paid £30 a week EMA doesn't give young people a great incentive for doing the placement.

SUE GALE - Delivery director, Connexions Berkshire

How is the credit crunch affecting you? The first thing that made me think about the issue was when we did our activity survey, which looks at the destinations of year 11 school leavers.

In the past we had fairly high figures of young people going straight into employment with no training. But in the recent survey there has been a drop in the numbers in that group, and a corresponding rise in the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

How are young people responding? In the past we worked with young people who weren't willing to look at training options. But now more young people are saying yes to entry to employment or college courses. They're finding that getting a job without training is not as easy as they thought.

What needs to change? At the moment if a young person is employed we assume they'll be employed for a whole year. But because of the economic situation you can't guarantee that now. The statutory duty is to track young people every year, but we've got to start monitoring them more frequently than that. If we can get to them early when they've just become unemployed we can steer them back into something else more easily.

FRED JENKINS - Personal adviser, Connexions Plymouth

Is the credit crunch affecting your work? I don't think I've really noticed the effects of the credit crunch on young people yet. Most young people are in full-time education so it hasn't had an impact on the vast majority of young people that I work with. Far more young people now stay in full-time education than ever before.

How do young people feel about it? To be honest, financial issues now are not that different to what they were a year ago. When young people speak to me the economic situation isn't the overriding theme. Often, young people are more concerned about personal issues. Perhaps any changes are yet to filter through to Plymouth.

Are you doing anything to protect young people from any future problems? We're trying to make young people more employable. I very much see my role as helping them develop employability skills. I see it less and less as trying to get them a job. I've got a colleague who is targeting those young people at most risk of falling into the not in education, employment or training group. We want to work with more young people in a more effective way to manage whatever difficult times might be around the corner.