In 2023, in France, according to INSEE, 12.3 per cent of young people aged between 15 and 29 were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET). This situation is neither new nor unique to France. Numerous programmes designed to support this group have been introduced, the largest in terms of numbers being the Youth Guarantee and, since March 2022, the Youth Engagement Contract. However, there is a phenomenon of non-take-up of public employment services, which limits the reach of these programmes.
Among the possible reasons cited, it may be that some young people “reject institutions” or “lack information about local youth support schemes”. In response to this alienation from institutions, youth workers are engaged in specialised prevention work, which involves supporting young people in difficulty within their own living environments, with a view to establishing a relationship of trust. This type of approach is an example of an ‘outreach’ strategy (Dubois-Orlandi, 2018) and enables the needs of individuals to be met without them having to take the initiative themselves. The ‘outreach’ approach has recently been developed to work with so-called ‘invisible’ young people.
Organisations have therefore proposed innovative solutions to engage this specific group, notably through regional calls for projects (Identifying and Engaging Invisible Groups) or national ones (100% Inclusion). The Fondation des Apprentis d’Auteuil is one of the successful applicants in the 100% Inclusion call for proposals.
The Étincelle programme, funded by the PIC, aimed to identify and engage ‘invisible’ young people likely to participate in one of these programmes. This broadening of the target group was based on training certain teams at the Fondation des Apprentis d’Auteuil, through a coaching programme, in new approaches to identifying and engaging the most vulnerable groups.
The aim of the research project was therefore to understand the extent to which the training undertaken by the teams at the Fondation des Apprentis d’Auteuil enabled these ‘invisible’ young people to be brought into the Étincelle scheme, an individualised programme designed to support young people in their journey towards integration. The study therefore provides analytical insights for identifying this profile of young people within administrative data, a group which, by definition, is rarely captured in such data. The analysis of the coaching provided to the Fondation des Apprentis d’Auteuil by the consultancy firm HACT also offers an in-depth example of an ‘outreach’ approach towards ‘invisible’ young people.
