Youth Employment PartnerSHIP launch in Hungary
The Budapest Institute organised a launch event of the Youth PartnerSHIP project at its office on May 29, 2019.
The Budapest Institute, the Hungarian partner of the Youth Employment Partnership project, invited to the local launch event representatives of the Ministry of Finance, which is the ministry responsible for the implementation of the Youth Guarantee Programme in Hungary, representatives of the Hungarian Public Employment Services and of Kontakt Foundation, an organisation active in the implementation of additional service elements related to the Youth Guarantee Programme in cooperation with local PES offices. Representatives of the Budapest Institute, the Ministry of Finance, the Department of Labour Economics of Corvinus University of Budapest (who conduct field research on the practices of the PES local offices) and the Kontakt Foundation attended the launch event.
At the beginning of the event, Budapest Institute researchers Ágota Scharle and Márton Csillag presented the current state of the project and the planned design of the interventions in Hungary. The first one consists of the organisation of local workshops after the training to bring together several local stakeholders and PES representatives. The goal is to facilitate communication and cooperation between the stakeholders. Organising the training in 40 districts allows us to examine the impact on cooperation and the efficiency of outreach activities. The other intervention would aim to change the attitude of mothers who have children less than 3 years old to motivate them to start looking for employment or available training before their child reaches their third birthday. The intervention would be carried out in cooperation with local nurses who regularly visit families with small children.
The participants agreed that the youth unemployment and NEET rates are still relatively high, and focusing on outreach activities could ensure that the Youth Guarantee programme reaches more potential clients. Women with small children are an important target group, as they still represent a large share of the NEET group. They also agreed that the network of nurses can be used to reach mothers with small children. However, we have to take into account the regional differences in the workload and priorities of nurses, in some districts it might be more difficult to cooperate with them. Hence, we need trilateral discussions between authorities supervising the home visiting nurses, the Ministry of Finance and the Budapest Institute. It is also important that PES offices should be able to offer something meaningful for mothers who contact them after talking to the nurse.
Regarding the local workshops, participants highlighted the importance of cooperation with schools and other NGOs and projects, including district rehabilitation programmes, through which we could reach more potential participants for the Youth Guarantee programme. They also pointed out that during workshops it is more useful to discuss specific types and cases of service clients than to remain at a more theoretical level, because this is more likely to facilitate future cooperation between various actors. Finally, the Ministry of Finance, Kontakt Foundation agreed that all training materials (and data) should be shared across the three organisations.