̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - youth

ActNowFilm premieres at COP29

plc32 — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:04:07 +0000

Youth leaders from around the planet celebrated the COP29 premiere of a new film demanding global negotiators give them a say in their own future.

Mary Robinson launches ActNowFilm at COP28

plc32 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:53:36 +0000

ActNowFilm launched at COP28 with an address from former Ireland President Mary Robinson, who urged world leaders to include young people in the climate negotiations that will decide their future.

ActNowFilm

plc32 — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 13:11:57 +0000

Youth leaders and world figures featured in new ActNowFilm, to premiere at COP28 call for young people to be included in national climate negotiation teams and global decision-making.

‘Generation lockdown’ needs targeted help-to-work policies – global report

fpjl2 — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:54:57 +0000

Experts argue that many countries simply “repackaged” existing – and often already failing – policies without the necessary funding or retooling to benefit under 24-year-olds: the global demographic hit hardest by the economic consequences of COVID-19.

In the report commissioned by the UN’s International Labour Organization, the Cambridge team calls on countries to go beyond employment policies that “yo-yo” with each virus surge, and implement longer-term interventions aimed squarely at the young.

̽��ֱ��report suggests that, since the pandemic began, more than one in six young people globally were made redundant, with severe impacts on their mental health and wellbeing.

It is estimated that over 40% of all young people with a job pre-pandemic – some 178 million young workers – worked in the most affected sectors: tourism, services and retail. Tourism alone saw financial losses eleven times greater than the 2008 financial crash.

Global youth employment fell by more than double the rate of older adults in 2020 (8.7% compared to 3.7%), with loss of work particularly concentrated among young women in middle-income countries. Global female employment rates fell by 5% over the last year, compared to 3.9% for men.

In the 132 countries that adopted 580 fiscal and economic measures to support businesses during the Covid crisis, only 12% aimed to improve women’s economic security by ensuring that female-dominated sectors received financial support – mainly in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

In some lower-income countries, there are reports of more young women turning to sex work as a result, contributing to rising HIV cases as well as unintended pregnancies.

Even among high-income nations, the impact on young people’s livelihoods has varied dramatically. For example, between February and April 2020 – as the virus took hold – there was an 11.7 percentage point reduction in labour participation among Canada’s young people, a 7.5 point drop in the US, but just a 1.9 point drop in South Korea.

Many of those lucky enough to hold onto work saw their incomes fall substantially. By May last year, young people around the world still in work had almost a quarter of their hours cut on average (23%).

“Young people face distinct challenges which disadvantage them compared to older adults when it comes to finding work post-pandemic,” said report co-author Dr Adam Coutts, from Cambridge’s Department of Sociology.

“These include less work experience and financial capital, weaker social networks, and higher levels of in-work poverty. They are also much more likely to have to make ends meet via informal cash-in-hand work.

“Recent school leavers are often ineligible for unemployment benefits or furlough schemes. This left many young people falling through the cracks of policy interventions,” said Coutts.

Co-author Dr Garima Sahai from Cambridge's Department of Geography said: "Young women have been especially hit by the pandemic who have experienced higher job losses, increased unpaid care work, the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence to name only a few effects.”

Researchers argue that “generation lockdown” could face protracted periods of unemployment, making it hard to re-enter the labour market, and get overtaken by “younger and better qualified cohorts”.

“Young people have been forced to remain at home, stuck with their parents, cut off from friends and partners,” said ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge co-author Dr Anna Barford. “Anxiety, stress and depression skyrocketed among young people around the world.”

“For those without ready access to internet connections or laptops, finishing school or hunting for work has been almost impossible at times,” she said.

“Repeated outbreaks in areas from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America will deplete household savings, shrink opportunities and diminish the aspirations of generation lockdown.”

̽��ֱ��report highlights that fact that young people migrate to find work and their place in the world. ̽��ֱ��pandemic shut down long-established migratory patterns: from young Guatemalans heading north to Mexico, to young Zimbabweans moving to South Africa. Young immigrants were also much more likely to lose work as average incomes fell.

Most national governments have offered economy-wide fiscal stimulus as well as labour market interventions, from reduced working weeks to temporary furlough schemes and increased social protection.

Some governments offered lifelines directly to sectors that prop up the youth labour market, such as India’s emergency loan support, which focused on the wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, rental and business services (with some 100 million young people in the Asia and Pacific region estimated to be employed in these sectors).

However, the researchers say that only a few nations deployed policy responses tailored to the specific needs of young people affected by the economic fallout of COVID-19.

These included South Korea’s one-off cash transfers to young jobseekers and government-backed paid apprenticeships in Malaysia, while the EU reinforced its “Youth guarantee” scheme: with member states aiming to provide everyone under the age of 30 with education, traineeship or a job within four months of becoming unemployed.

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that, without “youth-sensitive” employment policies, intergenerational inequalities will be further exacerbated during the pandemic recovery period.

They call for more youth-targeted ALMPs – Active Labour Market Policies – that provide support to boost employability, from vocational training to one-on-one jobseeker counselling, alongside mental health and wellbeing assistance for young people.

One example highlighted by the report's authors is the Indonesian ‘pre-employment card’, the Kartu Pre-Kerja, with $1.3bn allocated to fund skills training for two million young workers. By contrast, Mexico reduced its ALMPs spending to move funding to other parts of the pandemic response.

“Holistic policy responses require health and non-health government departments and ministries to work together more effectively,” said Coutts. “ ̽��ֱ��pandemic forced them to work together. These new networks and cross-departmental links need to be maintained.”

“Coordination should extend outside government to NGOs, trade unions, employer organisations, policy makers and young people themselves, in order to design better quality and more effective post-pandemic support for young people who have faced 18 months of social and economic chaos,” he added.

Nations the world over are guilty of “policy inertia” when it comes to supporting young people who lost work or will struggle to enter the labour market as a result of the pandemic, according to new ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge research.

Repeated outbreaks... will deplete household savings, shrink opportunities and diminish the aspirations of generation lockdown

Anna Barford

International Labour Organization

A young casual worker in Zimbabwe during the pandemic

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Pandemic restrictions aggravating known triggers for self-harm and poor mental health among children and young people

cjb250 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 23:30:04 +0000

Writing in ̽��ֱ��BMJ, Professor Tamsin Ford at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and colleagues say deterioration in mental health is clearest among families already struggling and call for urgent action “to ensure that this generation is not disproportionately disadvantaged by COVID-19.”

They point to evidence that the mental health of the UK’s children and young people was deteriorating before the pandemic, while health, educational, and social outcomes for children with mental health conditions were worse in the 21st century than the late 20th century. For example, between 2004 and 2017 anxiety, depression, and self-harm increased, particularly among teenage girls.

Given that self-harm is an important risk factor for suicide, it is not surprising that rates of suicide among the UK’s children and young people also increased in recent years, they write, though numbers remain low compared with other age groups - about 100 people aged under 18 died by suicide each year in England between 2014 and 2016.

Studies carried out during the pandemic suggest that although some families are coping well, others are facing financial adversity, struggling to home school, and risk experiencing vicious cycles of increasing stress and distress.

Probable mental health conditions increased from 11% in 2017 to 16% in July 2020 across all age, sex, and ethnic groups according to England’s Mental Health of Children and Young People Survey (MHCYP). In addition, a sample of 2,673 parents recruited through social media reported deteriorating mental health and increased behavioural problems among children aged 4 to 11 years between March and May 2020 (during lockdown) but reduced emotional symptoms among 11-16 year olds.

̽��ֱ��more socioeconomically deprived respondents had consistently worse mental health in both surveys, note the authors - a stark warning given that economic recession is expected to increase the numbers of families under financial strain.

̽��ֱ��authors acknowledge that deteriorating mental health is by no means uniform. For example, a sizeable proportion of 19,000 8-18 year olds from 237 English schools surveyed during early summer 2020 reported feeling happier, while a quarter of young people in the MHCYP survey reported that lockdown had made their life better.

And while the incidence of self-harm recorded in primary care was substantially lower than expected for 10-17 year olds in April 2020, it returned to pre-pandemic levels by September 2020, with similar patterns detected for all mental health referrals in England.

Data also show a doubling in the number of urgent referrals for eating disorders in England during 2020, despite a smaller increase in non-urgent referrals.

Professor Tamsin Ford from the Department of Psychiatry at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “Even before the pandemic, we were seeing deteriorating mental health among children and young people, which was amplified by inadequate service provision to support their needs. ̽��ֱ��lockdown and other measures aimed at tackling the pandemic will only serve to exacerbate these problems – and even more so for some different age groups and socioeconomic circumstances.

“Young people’s lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic, as is the case for lots of people, but their education has also been disrupted and many young people now face an uncertain future. We’re calling on policymakers to recognise the importance of education to social and mental health outcomes alongside an appropriate focus on employment and economic prospects.”

Reference
Ford, T. et al. Mental health of children and young people during pandemic. BMJ; 11 Mar 2020; DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n614

Adapted from a press release by ̽��ֱ��BMJ

Experts have issued a stark warning about the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of children and young people.

Even before the pandemic, we were seeing deteriorating mental health among children and young people, which was amplified by inadequate service provision to support their needs

Tamsin Ford

Kelly Sikkema

Boy wearing face mask

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Public Domain

Faith in democracy: millennials are the most disillusioned generation ‘in living memory’

fpjl2 — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 07:41:00 +0000

Young people’s faith in democratic politics is lower than any other age group, and millennials across the world are more disillusioned with democracy than Generation X or baby boomers were at the same stage of life.

Justice of the East: research on crime and rehabilitation in our region

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:02:00 +0000

Every day, on the streets of cities, towns and even villages across the East of England, young people take decisions that can – in a moment – alter the course of their life and the lives of others.

These events do not occur in a vacuum: the wrong combinations of environment, timing, people and experience can result in decades lost to crime and addiction – damaging communities and draining the resources of criminal justice services under increasing pressure.

This year, the ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology celebrates its 60th anniversary. Researchers from the Institute have spent years in the local region engaging with people at different points of these adverse cycles – from police and prison officers to kids on street corners – to build an evidence base for effective ways to reduce harm caused by criminality.

While providing prevention lessons for the UK and indeed the world, research that was kick-started and, in many cases, continues to run in the eastern region means that local policymakers have an opportunity to build on projects and findings uniquely relevant to their patch.

Perhaps none more so than the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+): a large longitudinal study that has followed more than 700 young residents of Peterborough from the age of 12 to now over 24, as they navigate school, work, family and the law.

Streets of Peterborough

Led by Professor Per-Olof Wikström, Director of the Centre for Analytic Criminology, the study uses waves of surveys conducted across 13 years that take a singular approach to data gathering. For a given day, the participants are asked to give hour-by-hour detail of where, when, how and with whom they have spent their time. This has been combined with psychological and genetic data, plus two huge surveys each of around 7,000 city residents, to create an extraordinary cross-section of young lives and communities in early 21st-century Britain.

“There is nothing else like this study,” says Wikström. “We have the kind of detail other studies simply don’t have. We can demonstrate not just where ‘hot spots’ of crime occur, but why – which can help us predict future crime-prone areas.”

In a major book, Breaking Rules, the research team showed how certain environments trigger crime, the central importance of personal morality and self-control in “crime-averse” youngsters, and how a third of teens never even consider breaking the law while just 16% commit more than 60% of all adolescent crime.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently finishing off their next book, which will take the study findings up to the present day. “We still have a huge retention rate of 91% for our cohort, many of whom are now back in Peterborough after university and some are now becoming parents themselves,” says senior PADS+ researcher Dr Kyle Treiber. “This data has the potential to reach far beyond criminological contexts. There’s so much information on everything from education and lifestyle to social mobility,” she says.

For Wikström, Peterborough is an ideal city to research the role of people and environment in crime causation. “It’s a diverse place of manageable size, with neighbourhoods at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. Itʼs big enough but not too big, so we could cover the whole urban area – and the surrounding Fenland means people tend to live their lives within the city.”

He suggests that the research, now being replicated (and its findings supported) in countries from Sweden to China, could prove useful for city planners in the eastern region, as well as police and social services. “Peterborough is an expanding city, and our data could help developers understand what creates crime-prone people and criminogenic situations.”

Cops and 'hot spots'

Like all cities, Peterborough has its hot spots: streets or intersections where there is a concentration of theft, violence and criminal damage. These are the areas that some of Wikström’s young people know all too well – and policing them is a challenge for a force that works with tightening budgets. To find the most effective ways of reducing crime in neighbourhoods across Peterborough, ̽��ֱ�� criminologists partnered with Cambridgeshire Constabulary to conduct major experimental trials of police deployment.

By randomly allocating 21 extra minutes of daily foot patrol by Police Community Support Officers to some of the cities hottest hot spots, researchers showed an average drop in reported crime of 39%. They worked out that every £10 spent on patrols would ultimately save £56 in prison costs.

“In working with us to conduct experiments, Cambridgeshire Constabulary has set the standard for cost-effectiveness in policing,” says Professor Lawrence Sherman, Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology. “ ̽��ֱ��results from Peterborough provide an important benchmark for evaluating police time – challenging those who would rather see patrols in safer neighbourhoods or high traffic areas.”

Fen life

Outside Peterborough, those brought up in the fens can feel their opportunities are limited, and rural life presents its own challenges to those working in the justice system.

A new project led by Cambridge criminologist Dr Caroline Lanskey and King’s College London psychologist Dr Joel Harvey is exploring how the unique Fenland environment stretching east from Peterborough contributes to youth offending. “There are pockets of the fens where isolation, poor transport links and often high levels of deprivation feed into the types of crime young people commit,” she says.

Lanskey and Harvey, with the support of PhD student Hannah Marshall, are working to develop an “explanatory framework” for rural rule-breaking. They are currently conducting interviews, as well as analysing risk assessment data for hundreds of young people from across Cambridgeshire.

“ ̽��ֱ��fens can feel defined by distance: geographically, but also socially and culturally,” says Lanskey. “Youth justice workers struggle to gain the trust of secluded communities – and struggle to reach them. It can take a whole day to see two or three people.” ̽��ֱ��project is aiming to report back findings later this year.

Prison and beyond

When the decisions young people make end badly, it can result in imprisonment. Life inside can be harsh – many of the region’s prisons have suffered extensive funding cuts, as in the rest of Britain – and, once a sentence is completed, opportunities on the outside can be scant.

For Drs Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow (who, like Lanskey, are in the Centre for Community, Gender and Social Justice), the secure estate holds a vast amount of talent and potential that risks being wasted. Four years ago, they started an initiative called Learning Together: partnering universities with prisons and probation organisations to build “transformative communities”, in which students from both inside and out are taught at the same time by some of the best lecturers in the UK.

̽��ֱ��Learning Together team has worked in several prisons in the eastern region, including Peterborough and Warren Hill near the Suffolk coast. It is with Whitemoor, the high security prison that sits just outside the Fenland town of March, that the team has one of their longest-standing partnerships.

“We started courses in Whitemoor three years ago, and the prison has bought into this work in really exciting ways,” says Ludlow. Bespoke courses on everything from philosophy to creative writing have been taught in Whitemoor; in most cases university students were taken into the prison to learn alongside students currently serving sentences.

“When we move ideas from the learning environment into criminal justice, we show people in prison that they are not defined by their offending, but that there are avenues for them to progress,” says Armstrong.

Learning Together has now instigated over 20 university–prison partnerships nationally. “ ̽��ֱ��relationships of trust built with prisons such as Whitemoor have allowed us to create models of working for partnerships across the country. By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas.”

From Fenland delinquency to policing Peterborough’s streets and the power of prison education, researchers from the Institute of Criminology are engaged in the region to help reduce the harm crime can cause.

By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas

Ruth Armstrong

UK police officer

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Circuit: Unlock Cambridge invites young people to discover an alternative side to the city

jeh98 — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 11:38:37 +0000

Circuit: Unlock Cambridge, developed and delivered by young people from Circuit Cambridge in collaboration with Danish arts collective Superflex, will combine bespoke games, films and pop-up performances throughout the city centre, with one secret location to be revealed on the day.

Circuit Cambridge is part of the national Circuit programme connecting 15-25 year olds to the arts in galleries and museums.

Led by Tate and funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Circuit invites young people to the arts through festivals, partnerships and peer-led programming.

Circuit: Unlock Cambridge will include alternative walking tours of the city, a model-making workshop in which guests can build their ideal Cambridge, and the opportunity to earn a ‘walking license’ for navigating around the many cyclists and tourists moving through the city centre.

Visitors will be invited to Jesus Green for Ducked Off, a demolition game to help locals vent their frustrations about rising house prices. Attendees can also submit comments and suggestions to be converted into song lyrics and performed by a local choir in Market Square. ̽��ֱ��event will culminate in a closing party showcasing photography, film and artwork by local creatives.

Tahira Fitzwilliam-Hall, Circuit Programme Manager said: “ ̽��ֱ��young people of Circuit Cambridge have masterminded a range of activities that really puts our city under a new lens; we’re thrilled to have such innovative input from Superflex to make this festival both a fun day out and a meeting of minds to unlock the potential of our city. Come along and witness Cambridge like you’ve never seen it before!”

To find the secret location meet your guide at Market Square from 6-7pm and/or discover the location as it is announced on the website on the day.

For clues to what’s in store or to contribute your complaint for the choir get in touch @circuitcambs on Instagram and Twitter.

Full schedule and locations will be announced soon, please visit the website for the latest information.

Youth arts group Circuit Cambridge, run jointly at Kettle’s Yard and Wysing Arts Centre, has announced a free one-day festival on Saturday 10 October dedicated to artistic exploration of the city.

̽��ֱ��young people of Circuit Cambridge have masterminded a range of activities that really puts our city under a new lens

Tahira Fitzwilliam-Hall, Circuit Programme Manager

Circuit: Unlock Cambridge

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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