Youth Projects has launched an innovative, mobile outreach employment service - Youth4Jobs - in Western Melbourne to address entrenched, cyclical youth unemployment and the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Youth Projects will target the local government areas of Melton, Brimbank and Wyndham, which were experiencing the highest concentrations of youth unemployment the organisation has seen in some time pre-pandemic. The rate of young people who weren’t studying or working hovered around 14.2% (compared with 11.2% state-wide) and there is a growing need for youth-specialist programs to re-engage and support young people in the region.

Thanks to an injection of funding from the state government, we are now able to expand our employment services into Melbourne’s west to enable personalised employment support to long-term unemployed jobseekers and jobseekers who at risk of being long-term unemployed.

Youth4Jobs is our latest program being delivered via a unique, mobile outreach model to support young people aged 16 to 25 years old in Melbourne’s west to develop stronger work and life skills, reduce job drop-out, and promote independence and resilience in sustaining future work with up to 30-weeks post-placement support.

The mobile outreach team hit the road at the start of July 2021 and includes intensive supports for young people from diverse backgrounds with a specific focus on refugees and migrants, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and LGBTQIA+ young people(s). We will also target employers in skill shortage areas to create new jobs.

Youth4Jobs will ensure that young people are not only ready for work, but are able to sustain meaningful employment by providing:

• A mobile workforce of qualified Youth Coaches to deliver targeted brief interventions and address the fragmented nature of the public transport system in the west
• Assertive outreach to target the most vulnerable young jobseekers and long-term unemployed, enabling higher engagement
• Strengthens-based approaches to engagement and training to meet local demands and create pathways into major employing industries
• Collaborations to increase jobseeker confidence to interact with employers
• Employer/Industry collaborations to reduce some pre-conceived notions that employers may hold about young people - a critical role in work preparation and linkages to real job outcomes.

Our proven model of working through the lens of the social determinants of health ensures young people are supported to address their barriers whilst looking for work and ensure that life skills are developed, and an understanding work is sustainable whilst experiencing non vocational issues.

To find out more or chat to one of our youth specialists, please visit Youth4Jobs.

For media enquiries, please contact Nic Horton.