Are any of your children NEET, and what might help them?

[Wallywonker72]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/28/a-record-of-failure-whats-in-the-first-part-of-alan-milburns-neet-report

Are any of your children NEET? What age are they ?
How did they end up in this situation ?
What do you think would have helped them avoid this - and what would help them to get out of it now?
How do they feel about their situation ? The report says that the great majority want to work / study / train.

No judgement here. I have two boys age 15 and 18, they are in school / uni - but life feels precarious for them in a way it didn’t for my generation. I don’t feel that I can give them much in the way of advice as the world is so different to the one that I grew up in.

How about you send them to study for a year or two or three even in East Asia?Singapore,Hong Kong,China,Japan,Malaysia?...They can work on the student visas while studying in safe environments with much less crime and strife in technology environments that are often more advanced than the U.K now.Pick up some Malay and Chinese which i think will be useful the way the world is heading.With
teaching and tutoring as the fall back when they need money and believe me its a great deal of fun over here,I see only horrors myself when i view modern British work culture.I shall be retiring to Okinawa in the future.

My DS is 20 ( just) and DD 18 (just) they are both neurodivergent with no learning disability.

They are both bright, funny, loving young adults but the world is tough for them.

shes just finishing A levels, he has just finished a college course and left a job a couple of months ago….he is likely to be NEET for a while, she’s having a year out before uni, works at Primark at weekends, volunteers but needs a lot of support from us to navigate daily life.

school was tough for both, being bright wasn’t enough and for him he was labelled as ‘naughty’ ‘rude’ from primary… many detentions, suspensions and exclusions later… his self esteem is rock bottom, he has very few GCSE’s and vocational college qualifications that don’t help him navigate life/ workplace politics or manage day to day responsibilities.

he smokes to much weed, spends to much money and eats to much food… he has little motivation and can’t see a future…

We are very active and engaged parents and have always supported their education, out of school hobbies and socialising.

what does he need? He needed a world without Covid… a school that didn’t treat him so badly ( but his hatred of change meant he refused to change)

I really don’t know what he needs now- he has so little hope.

For her, she needs a kinder world- easy to say but hard to make happen! Being a young neurodivergent female is so hard when you havn’t found your tribe or teachers don’t get you.

I am very proud of both of them for many many reasons but their ( and our lives) are much harder than they need to be…..

My 17 year old is, although he has a college place in September. I had a plan when he left school and went straight it to work but it didn’t work out due to an injury. There are no jobs for teenager where I live - all shops are staffed by older people propping up their pensions, and all apprenticeships are vastly competitive. He applied for a pot washer in a pub but was told he didn’t have enough experience! I did tell him to say I’d been making him wash up every day for years 🤣

It is a real worry. I don’t know what would solve it.