The Spear Programme supports NEET young people to participate in work, education or training. The young people we work with are all NEET, aged 16-24, and facing at least one barrier to employment, such as involvement in crime, having fewer than 5 GCSEs, being on free school meals, or having lived in care. They have an average of 3.7 barriers each. Some of these barriers present more significant challenge to accessing work than others, and multiple barriers further compound that challenge (Impetus, May 2025).
We have 18 Spear centres across the UK, and have worked with 11,000 young people over more than two decades. Spear starts with 4-6 weeks of group and 1-1 sessions, where experienced coaches help trainees develop work-ready attitudes, and offer skills training such as in CV writing and interview practice, as well as job interviews with our Employer Partners. Each trainee then receives 6-12 months of follow-on support. The Spear Programme has been evaluated by the DWP and found to be highly effective.
What is stopping more young people from participating in employment, education or training?
The rise in mental ill-health
Through Spear, we have observed an increase in young people reporting mental health challenges, as has been documented across the country. The proportion of young people we work with who cite mental-ill-health with a low to moderate impact on daily functioning has increased by about 60% since 2018.
Research carried out by the Youth Futures Foundation with the University of Manchester found that “Youth unemployment can be both a cause and a consequence of poor mental health. The growth of mental ill health among young people is fuelling the rising level of youth economic inactivity.”
Their research looked at causes of increased mental ill health among young people and found four key drivers:
- Worsening sleep quality
- Economic precarity and affordability pressures – particularly housing and insecure employment
- Reduction in children and youth services
- Social media and smartphone use
The same study also provides evidence that the decline in young people’s mental health is “real – and not merely a result of increased symptom recognition, greater awareness, overdiagnosis, or reduced resilience.”.
The link between unemployment and mental ill-health is clear and bidirectional. Young people end up trapped in a cycle where poor mental health makes it harder for them to get and sustain work, and being out of work makes their mental health deteriorate further. The King’s Trust TK Maxx Youth Index 2025 found that half of NEET young people say unemployment makes them feel hopeless about their future, with NEET young people having the lowest happiness and overall wellbeing of any group studied. Those NEET for longer than six months had a worse overall wellbeing than those NEET for less than six months. Half of NEET young people say they do not feel in control of their future, compared to 39% of their peers in education or employment.
We regularly encounter young people who have not left the house for significant amounts of time, who are anxious and very low in confidence, and for whom simply turning up to a training course for instance – even when they have already secured a place – feels like an enormous step. Kamira, who did Spear in Bristol said “Before Spear, I was in a really bad place. I was in a really toxic relationship and I was distancing myself from my friends and family. It made me feel lonely and isolated. It took a really big toll on my anxiety and my mental state to the point where I didn’t want to leave my house. I couldn’t get on the bus by myself, and I just didn’t want to go out in general…I found out about Spear because my nan dragged me to the Job Centre, to find out what next steps I could take. We spoke about how about bad my anxiety and lack of confidence was, and that’s when we found out about Spear.” For these young people, it is not enough to simply ensure that they have a training place (even auto-enrolled) or a guaranteed job – our experience through Spear is that they need intensive personalised support from a trusted adult to develop the mindsets and skills needed to enter and sustain work or education.
John, a young person who completed the programme in Leeds, said before starting Spear he “didn’t recognise himself”, as he turned to drugs and drinking while out of work. He is now thriving in work and was featured in a film we made last year. The Spear Programme is particularly well placed to support young people with moderate mental-ill-health, who can thrive in work if given support. While not a specialist mental health provision, over 40% of those who did Spear across 2024 and 2025 reported mental ill-health, of whom the majority (57%) said it had some impact on their daily activities but not a “significant” impact every day. Of those who completed the programme in 2024 and reported a mental health issue, 67% were in education, employment or training a year on.
The weak labour market and economy - exacerbated by regional disparities
GDP per person is only 0.8% higher than at its pre-pandemic peak, and it has taken about 6 years to see the growth that we would have expected in 7 months before Covid hit (Resolution Foundation, 2026). It is clear that the overall UK labour market has weakened, with vacancies falling from a high of 1,290,000 in Q2 2022 to 726,000 in Q2 2025. The number of unemployed people per vacancy has also risen to 2.3 in Q2 2025 from 1.7 a year earlier, and the UK overall unemployment rate has edged up to 4.8%, from 4.1% a year earlier (Youth Futures Foundation, Youth Employment Outlook 2025). Within this tougher context, young people are especially vulnerable; they are overrepresented in sectors like hospitality and retail, where the volume of jobs closely tracks macroeconomic conditions: 42.9% of employed 16-24 year olds work in these sectors, compared with 16.1% of adults over 25 (Youth Futures Foundation, Youth Employment Outlook 2025). They are overrepresented in precarious roles (e.g. casual, short-term, gig economy) that lack job security and benefits – these are roles that are easier to scale back or cut altogether when demand isn't there. They also lack the experience that employers prefer to hire for when the job market is weaker. This has a tangible effect on the number of entry level roles available: with more young people competing for fewer jobs, those with barriers to employment and a lack of confidence navigating the world of work disproportionately miss out.
Regional variation of NEET rates is also significant, with rates highest in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the East Midlands (Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics, 2025). We believe these higher rates stem from greater compounding disadvantages faced by the young people in those regions. For instance, our Spear centre in Leeds consistently works with young people who experience higher numbers of barriers to employment than the average for our centres, and tends to see lower EET outcome rates (though these are still very good within the wider regional context).
Increases in minimum wage and employer's National Insurance contributions
With the changes to minimum wage and employer’s National Insurance contributions increasing pressure on businesses’ finances, they are less confident to employ those with additional barriers or needs, further disadvantaging those furthest from participating in the jobs market. Since the changes came into effect in October 2024 the total number of payrolled employees has decreased by 0.5%, and the retail and hospitality sectors have seen more significant losses, -1% and -3.9%, respectively. Young people are more represented in these industries, and the number of payrolled employees aged 18 to 24 has decreased by 1.3%.
These pressures also influence what kind of employer these businesses want to be, with UK businesses investing 36% less per employee in training, in real terms, than in 2005 (Learning & Work Institute, 2025). We have strong partnerships with employers motivated to invest in young people who face barriers to employment, but we are concerned that this goes against the overall trend. Businesses are not investing as much in training their employees overall, but particularly those with fewer qualifications to begin with. Those with fewer qualifications, likely looking for entry level roles are more affected, with graduates three times as likely to receive training at work than non-graduates (Learning & Work Institute, 2025). This leaves NEET young people less likely to receive training, despite standing to benefit most from it. UK businesses are under increasing strain and are increasingly reluctant to risk investing heavily in employees.
What would make the biggest difference to support more young people to participate?
A coaching approach that treats young people as adults with dignity and agency
We help young people realise their potential by coaching them to build the mindset and skills they need to get into EET and thrive once they’re there. The data and 20 years’ work with 11,000 young people tell us that the executive coaching approach is effective. This approach is very personalised as the coach responds to what they hear from participants, generating greater engagement. It also gives opportunities for constructive feedback and challenge, increasing young people’s self-awareness and focus on areas for growth. We use this approach in group and 1-1 settings, providing realistic preparation for the workplace and maximising contact time with a coach.
Executive coaching-style conversations allow us to deeply understand a young person’s barriers to work and context before moving on to actions and directions. Investing this time makes conversations more targeted and generates buy-in. Taking a coaching approach to support conversations in Job Centres and Youth Hubs could therefore shift them from the current focus on benefits compliance to a tailored approach, as the person being coached owns and directs where the conversations go. Recent research like the Impetus Youth Jobs Gap report and Rapid Evidence Review (RER) by the Learning & Work Institute says that such personalised support is key.
With the increasing use of artificial intelligence comes added uncertainty; some of our young people were recently interviewed by the Institute For The Future Of Work for a study they have done with the EY Foundation on this subject. One learning from this research was that as artificial intelligence increasingly changes the jobs market, particularly entry level jobs, then core “human/soft” skills become increasingly significant. It’s important not to overlook these skills in preparing people for work, and this is a unique strength of a coaching approach.
The opportunities for feedback and challenge provided by our approach are also crucial to its success. Through these, young people become aware of areas for growth, with the coach helping them to make and commit to a plan of action. With coaching, these relationships are ‘adult to adult’ (Berne 1961), avoiding a ‘parent-child’ dynamic that can hold young people back. These high levels of both support and challenge are essential for the depth of learning required, for NEET young people to overcome multiple barriers to work and enter the workplace ready to succeed. If there is not the resource/capacity within the DWP to deliver this high support, high challenge approach, then we would highly recommend that it is built into all provision that the DWP looks to commission for NEET young people facing multiple barriers.
Rigorous use of data to develop a highly effective and therefore credible programme
We have developed highly effective data management to inform our impact approach, so we know confidently that Spear works. Over 70% of those who complete the programme move into work or education and remain there a year later, and we are in touch with over 90% of completers at that point, giving us a high level of confidence that our recorded outcomes are representative.
In 2022 the DWP Employment Data Lab evaluated Spear participant outcomes against those of a group of similar individuals. Greater increases in participation in employment, education or training (EET) and weeks spent in work were both statistically significant and sustained across the duration of the study.
We are concerned not to see a more evidence-based approach across the sector, and would recommend an approach to data that empowers and incentivises work coaches and other teams engaging with young people to change direction and follow activities that are generating the most change.
For example, we are aware that local directories are being compiled of employment support services (e.g. in the Central London Forward Trailblazer, and some areas under Aspiration NEET Zero). These directories are potentially very useful tools for connecting NEET young people with the right support for them. However, none that we have seen so far seems to afford any means of quality assurance to young people trying to compare likely outcomes between different offers of support. A young person eligible for multiple programmes is therefore just as likely to select an ineffective one as an effective one, and therefore to remain NEET, but now having had a poor experience of support that damages their trust that other programmes might be more effective. If these directories were to incorporate some element of youth review/rating, or giving organisations the option of declaring their outcomes, we could better mitigate for this risk and deliver more effective (and better value) referrals for young people.
In addition, a number of DWP work coaches who refer onto Spear have told us that they are neither empowered nor incentivised to refer based on the known effectiveness of local provision. They do not have the data to compare likely outcomes from different offers of support, and are not rewarded for efforts to take this into consideration, even at an anecdotal level. Again, this seems like a key point where some simple changes, such as giving local providers of employment support the option to declare their outcomes to Job Centres regularly and systematically, or recognising work coaches whose EET outcomes for young people are strongest, would result in greater effectiveness and value for money, as more young people would be moved into work or education through filling places on existing effective provision.
Local partnerships with referrers, allowing interventions to engage hidden NEETs, and employers, allowing direct placement into jobs
While the core content of the Spear Programme is highly standardised, each of our 18 Spear centre teams are trained and empowered to build their own partnerships fit for purpose in their local context. We see the benefits of this in our referrals, roughly half of which come through Job Centres, with the other half from a mix of social services, probation and other local statutory services, local charities, and word of mouth. As a result of this locally contextualised mix of partners, we are able to engage and enrol hidden NEETs – those not claiming any benefits and who are therefore not reachable through a Job Centre at present. Nearly 1 in 3 of the 1,175 young people we worked with last year were hidden NEETs.
Engaging with employers is also beneficial; young people often cite mock interviews and company visits as turning points. Meeting employers builds confidence and gives experience beyond theory, getting them to set their sights higher and start to feel belonging in a workplace. Many of our Spear teams also say that when recruiting young people onto the programme, mentioning that it will include a guaranteed interview for a real job within the next six weeks is a significant draw.
Our relationship with our employment partners gives us a feedback loop to ensure our trainees are equipped with the skills employers want to see, further building the effectiveness and credibility of the Spear Programme. When employers come in for a mock interview, or as part of a career panel, or when our trainees visit a workplace, the employers talk about the skills they are looking for. This allows us to adapt the programme in small ways for each trainee, and to spot significant changes across the labour market. This connection to employers future proofs our support offering.