Kirklees council wins I&DeA social media funding for NEET mobile solution

Kirklees Council has won a significant grant to develop a mobile solution for the NEET community in partnership with its LSP and Connexions Kirklees, and will use Looking Local to develop the technology. The key to this fantastic funding opportunity is to develop a mobile solution in collaboration with the NEET community to ensure it meets their needs, is developed in line with their requirements, in a style that grabs their attention and that they can connect with.

Ultimately it is about getting young people back into education or into employment and reducing the number of NEETs and their impact on society now and into the future. In the current economic climate, councils and job services are struggling to meet their NEET reduction targets - NI117 which is a priority for hundreds of councils across the UK - so having as many tools to help with this issue can only be a good thing.

"Being NEET is an enormous waste of a young person's potential and contribution to their community and to the economy. Evidence shows that spending time NEET is a major predictor of later unemployment, low income, depression and poor mental health."
© Kirklees NEET Strategy 2008-2010

Together we hope that by widening access to information and services dedicated to the NEET community, via technologies that play more of a daily role in their lives, that this will increase their awareness and interest in improving their life chances. It should also help contribute to their understanding of the importance of training, work and personal improvement, bringing wider social benefits as well as improving their individual circumstances.

This programme of work is in its early stages and the project will run until March 2011. Looking Local believes that it will benefit not only our current customers in terms of offering additional ways to engage and mobilise their NEET communities, but will also be a technical tool to address other audience specific issues.

Operations Manager Guy Giles said; "People categorised as a NEET are notoriously hard to reach, however by focusing on the one thing that they are certain of having access to - a mobile phone - we hope to reach through numerous barriers and bring a realistic, useful solution to their fingertips."

Mobile phones are increasingly internet enabled and many of the newer packages allow free use of the web, however few websites are designed for use on such a small interface. Hence the development of a NEET specific mobile portal hopes to ensure that key services are delivered in an appropriate design/manner to this hard to reach group, as cheaply as possible.

Looking Local will be making their progress and end products available to the wider local government community on this website and in conjunction with the I&DeA. There will be a number of disseminating events where we shall elaborate on the evaluation, consultation and technical phases on this work. For more information, updates and to find out when dissemination events will take place please return to our website on a regular basis.