‘No young person should be locked out of participation’

Across my career, I have watched children’s trajectories form earlier than most people realise. By the time a young person becomes NEET (not in education, employment or training), the warning signs have usually been visible for years: delayed assessments, long waits for support, families stretched to breaking point, schools without the resources to intervene. As a SENCo (special educational needs coordinator), I saw how often these young people were already carrying the weight of disadvantage long before they reached 16.

And the consequences are lifelong. Young people who spend extended periods as NEET face lower earnings, poorer health, reduced civic participation, and higher risks of long‑term unemployment. Prescriptions for anxiety and depression are over 50 per cent higher in the ten to 20 years following their period out of education or training. De Fraja, Lemos and Rockey (2021) calculate that each month of unemployment at age 18 to 20 leads to a permanent income loss of 1.2 per cent per month unemployed. These are not temporary setbacks; they are structural disadvantages that compound over decades. When we allow a young person to drift into exclusion at 18, we are shaping the inequalities they will face at 28, 38, and beyond.

READ MORE: Milburn Review to set out stark NEETS challenge and call for whole system reform

And nowhere is this crisis more visible than among disabled young people, who face far higher NEET rates than their non‑disabled peers. Young people considered to have Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND) are around 80 per cent more likely to be NEET than average. This creates a devastating divide; in 2024/2025, 29.6 per cent of disabled young people were NEET in the UK compared with 8.7 per cent of non-disabled peers, a gap of 20.9 percentage points.  The NEET rate for disabled people was 30.7 per cent in 2013/14, and 29.6 per cent in 2024/25. It has barely moved.

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Yet we know what works. I have seen it firsthand. Supported Internships are one of the most powerful tools we have for transforming outcomes for disabled young people. When delivered well, they provide structured, meaningful work experience, tailored support, and a pathway into paid employment.

It proves what I have witnessed throughout my career: when disabled young people are given the right support structure, they thrive. They gain confidence, skills, and a sense of purpose. Employers gain loyal, capable staff. Society gains from their talent, perspective and wider participation through employment that unlocks their full potential.

The Department for Education’s decision to expand a pilot for non-EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan) holders demonstrates awareness and appetite, but the programme faces significant barriers to scaling. Employer willingness, provider capacity and funding availability, including through Access to Work, all constrain supply. A young person with an EHCP who wants to work, whose family wants them to work, and whose school believes they could work, can still find that no supported internship is available within a reasonable distance. The system has created a model that works, but not to date the infrastructure to deliver it at scale.

As we look towards the findings of Alan Milburn’s upcoming Young People and Work report, we must consider the problem at hand. The NEET crisis among disabled young people is a moral crisis. It tells us who we value and who we overlook. Individual, social and economic potential is being wasted, and we must face this as we ‘Get Britain Working’.

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