We continue to be very concerned about the short fall in good careers information and encouragement to young people, not to mention the shortage of secure, sustainable and fulfilling job opportunities for them. We want to keep this conversation going, to ensure that those who are able to affect young people's access to information and guidance, and those who train and employ young people, are encouraged to invest in better resources and question the effects of 'gig' economy decisions of the longer-term impact on their organisations, the labour market and the kind of societ we live in.

As a first step, we succcessfully applied for funding from the Warwick University Social Sciences Impact Acceleration fund for a project entitled: Signposts to Exit Precarious Pathways (STEPP) and from the Institute of Advance Studies Delivering Results fund, to develop materials for use in workshops with young people to pass on lessons learned in the research. As a result we have produced a short video, based on the interviews with young people and work with regional youth labour market stakeholders, to generate debate among young people about the issues they face in moving from education to employment. We have also produced a leaflet illustrated with examples of the experiences of young people we interviewed, and providing the information that they wished they had known when they started thinking about their future careers at school and college.

We are using the materials with young people in the Midlands and those who work with them. We hope that others will used more widely and you can access both the video and booklet below:

Paths2Work: Video Link

Paths2Work booklet: Working your way in: what young people need to know about the jobs market