James, Samuel
Giving vulnerable young people time in the present to focus on the future
- 2020.
23
Young prisoners, NEETs, young people leaving care, homeless youth: these are all categories of populations that public policies struggle to reach. Since 2009, the Youth Experimentation Fund (FEJ) has been supporting projects aimed at filling the gaps in common law mechanisms. This article is based on lessons from the evaluation of four of these projects. The challenge is to determine and analyze the success factors of these social measures. The construction of public policies is based on inductive work from field knowledge and the study of the needs of young people in relation to employment-focused devices or financial benefits. The need to remove the potential administrative, health, and isolation barriers should not be overlooked. These young people, who we can group under the term “vulnerable,” enter a social scheme that adapts to their needs and that allows them to take the time they need, at a suitable time in their trajectory. This appears to be a lever allowing these young people to “make it.”