‘Work is good for you’: how UK scheme could help tackle youth mental health crisis

Подробности

Pat McFadden and Juliet Campbell, MP for Broxtowe, with Saqib (right), a Boots warehouse employee in Nottingham. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA View image in fullscreen Pat McFadden and Juliet Campbell, MP for Broxtowe, with Saqib (right), a Boots warehouse employee in Nottingham. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA Youth unemployment ‘Work is good for you’: how UK scheme could help tackle youth mental health crisis Paid employment can boost confidence and wellbeing, says Pat McFadden as jobs guarantee scheme gets under way

Prefer the Guardian on Google Work must be “part of the answer” to the mental health crisis among young people, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has said as he met some of the first beneficiaries of Labour’s youth jobs guarantee scheme .

He was speaking on a visit to Boots’s headquarters in Nottingham on Wednesday, where several 18- to 21-year-olds were taken on under the job guarantee – with their wages paid by the taxpayer for six months.

Some of the recruits were packing and labelling boxes of products to be posted out to households, and others are in administrative roles. They told McFadden about long periods of fruitless jobhunting.

“It was just amazing for me to hear their stories,” McFadden said of the recruits. “These are young people who have been out of work for one, two, up to four years. Most of them have been working here for a few weeks. And you can already see how it’s changed their confidence in themselves – their sense of belief in themselves.”