How we support youth employability in Scotland

The main aim of the service is to provide support to young people aged 16-24 who are furthest removed from the employment market.

The employability service provides training programmes that focus on a range of sectors such as Construction, Customer Service, Sport & Fitness, as well as general beginner programmes.

The programmes can run between four to six weeks and vary between three to five days per week. They offer young people life guidance and employment skills that will hopefully steer them onto the right path, whether that is into further training, employment, or higher education.

The service also works with young people to help them achieve qualifications, identification, and more.

Monday

"This week is the last week of the financial quarter as well as Annual Performance Review (APR) season, so I caught up on reporting and ensured that I had all my supervisions and 1-1s complete for my team.

I am also part of the Investors in Young People (IiYP) group. IiYP is a part of the Investment in Young People initiative – a social enterprise that recognises the work of organisations in helping young people (aged five to 25 years old) in gaining employability skills.

Today, I had a meeting today with my other two colleagues in my IiYP group before the large IiYP meeting tomorrow. We were assigned the topic ‘Meta Skills’, which is a new terminology being used by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to explain human skills that are needed in the future and that can’t be replicated by technology."

"In the IiYP meeting, I was able to catch up with the other people involved and share my group’s progress on our topic. It was a really positive meeting, and we were proud to share our progress.

In the afternoon, I created email programme recruitment templates and inputted data into Glasgow’s Employability Service. This hosts a large collection of employability services alongside detail of what each service provides.

The initiative was set by the council to drive awareness of what services are available to young people, so it was important that I got all our programmes onto this site. I also updated our All Employability information leaflet ahead of our next set of networking events."

"I caught up with my team following the Customer Service Programme before meeting with the social media team for a drop in Q&A session. I oversee social media for the service so it was really helpful to get a better understanding of how we could improve.

Because of the age demographic of our service users, social media is a vital tool in helping us to reach more young people."

"I met with a Quality Improvement Officer called Jane, who I met at a networking day last month after she gave a talk on Meta Skills.

In the afternoon I had a meeting with a new staff member from the Street League organisation – another training provider who use sport to engage with young people furthest removed from the job market. As they were new to Street League, I discussed how we can work together in the future to make the difference and help more young people enter the workforce."

"I worked with a member of my team on a new networking video for our new Stepping Stones programme. It is great seeing my team try new things and get out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. At the end of the day, my team and I went for a few drinks to enjoy some time to catch up away from the hustle and bustle of such a busy week."

"I have worked with lots of young people since starting at Action for Children and I feel I have made a difference to many of these young people’s lives. It is great seeing a young person grow in confidence in a matter of weeks – you could have a young person who doesn’t speak on day one and by week four they are leading groups through sessions and openly chatting about their experiences. Seeing this progress is really rewarding and reminds me why I love my job; every day is different and there is so much potential still to come."