A Wrexham-based organisation that transforms young people’s lives is launching a major campaign in Flintshire to help individuals in need support into the world of work.
WeMindTheGap charity wants to have a Big Conversation with people aged 18 to 21 in Flintshire about how to lift the barriers to them following their job or education dreams.
It hopes the campaign will help ease a “perfect storm” facing the region’s employers who are struggling to recruit new, young talent to fill crucial positions.
The Big Conversation in Flintshire will run from January 9 to 14. It follows on from the success of a similar campaign in Wrexham two years ago.
Ali Wheeler, CEO of Wrexham-based WeMindTheGap, said: “We need to find and then to talk to young people in Flintshire.
“We want to get inside the heads and hearts of those people whose lives and education were so rudely disrupted by Covid19, and as a society we are not doing enough to reach and communicate with those young people.
“We started the first Big Conversation in Wrexham two years ago because we were re-emerging from Covid and we weren’t seeing the numbers of young people being referred to WeMindTheGap that we normally would have been.
“The research highlighted that 46% of young people said they are experiencing loneliness despite reengaging in education since the pandemic, while 37% said they’d lost interest in education and one in three said they have given up on the things that they enjoyed before Covid.
“Many young people also shared that they feel they lack the social skills such as resilience, motivation and initiative to be part of the workplace, and so are finding it difficult to find, secure and stay in work.
“At the same time employers were telling us that young people were harder to find to recruit and retain in employment. They told us what their challenges and barriers were to employing young people.
“The interesting thing about carrying out this conversation in Flintshire, is that the young people who are now 18 to 21, would have been 14 to 17 during Covid.
“That’s usually when we all transition into our communities, into our next steps in life, finding work experience – that was completely stopped for this particular group of young people..
“Due to a lack of opportunity to gain experience, it’s impossible to understand what the world of work is like.
“There’s a perfect storm happening at the moment, and over the next five years we will have more people wanting to retire, and we will have fewer young people with the right skills able to apply for jobs if we don’t change the criteria on how we recruit young people.
“We need to think differently in how we support young people when they first enter the world of work, because they may not have learned their skills through a Saturday job or work experience.
“I’m feeling quite fearful for the future of generations of our young people unless we do something differently now and it starts with the Big Conversation.”
Ali appealed to parents, carers, neighbours and friends to encourage young people to get involved in the Big Conversation.
She said: “We’ve got to find young people, and young people aren’t on the same social media channels as most of the community. The way to find young people is by trusted referral.
“We need the people of Flintshire to find our young people and guide them in the direction of our Big Conversation so that we can ensure they are heard.”
Laura Columbine, WeMindTheGap’s community maker in Flintshire, said: ”The Covid pandemic is still having a big impact, particularly in terms of independence. We are seeing lots of young people reliant on whatever their home environment looks like.
“A conversation like this is really important because the world has changed so much while the scope and environment of jobs available has completely changed as well.
“Quite often people are expecting from young people what they expected years and years ago, and actually things have completely changed.
“Something like this is crucial to shed light on what is important to young people currently, to understand what they want, and to be able to provide the support that’s actually needed, rather than what has always been given or assumed.
“It’s also very timely because the recently published, Get Britain Working White Paper. sets out the Government’s Youth Guarantee to unleash opportunity and set young people on the path to success.
“It states that too many young people are at risk of being left behind, without the skills, opportunities and support to get started in the world of work, preventing them from building pathways to fulfilling futures.
“We want to understand by hearing from young people directly, and learn how best to walk alongside them on their journey.”
The Big Conversation in Flintshire is being funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and supported by Flintshire County Council.
Wrexham University is supporting the Big Conversation and will be helping WeMindTheGap with community engagement for the campaign.
For more information about the Big Conversation in Flintshire, contact Laura Columbine at laura@wemindthegap.org.uk
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