As you can see, our news briefing and website have undergone a big facelift, and from now on we’ll be bringing you YFX in a bolder, brighter and more accessible format. All our news stories can now easily be shared with colleagues and contacts, making it simpler for you to exchange ideas and keep others abreast of the latest in the youth sector. You’ll also notice that YFX is now published a little later – the last Thursday of the month.

You will find all our news stories listed under six main headings: Wellbeing, Youth work & the sector, Transition & work, Home & safety, Inclusion & rights, and Engagement & opportunity. If you are on our email distribution list, you will still receive an email each month alerting you that YFX has been published. We welcome your feedback on the new-look YFX!

This week ACYS has also launched its latest Face the Facts package, Growing youth employment; you can read more about that below. But we are sure you’ll agree that it is an important and impressive addition to our expanding list of youth sector resources.

Our Face the Facts package on entrepreneurship, which explores ways to get more young people into meaningful employment, comes at an apposite time. This month’s issue of YFX contains stories that look to the future for young people, and recognise that the employment paradigm has changed for them, and that they will need support to weather this transition.

The Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL), in its important report The teenage dream unravels: Trends in youth unemployment, finds that the high youth unemployment rate (14.2% in January) reflects the fact that Australia’s young people are in the eye of a ‘social and economic storm’ that requires new thinking to come out safely on the other side. BSL has called for a national Youth Transitions Service to be implemented, similar to the pilot that BSL runs in outer Melbourne (see ‘Transition & work’).

Commenting on the recent review of the welfare system (known colloquially as the ‘McClure review’ after its lead author), the country’s peak youth bodies have called upon the Australian Government to ‘design a comprehensive youth jobs plan’ because they recognise that the situation for young people is much harder and more complicated than it ever was in the past (see ‘Youth work & the sector’).

The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has also made a strong plea for the government to invest in effective programs to help young people into jobs, and to abandon a scheme that would see young people up to the age of 30 receive no financial support for six months at a time if they are out of work (see ‘Transition & work’).

And the 2024 Intergenerational report (see ‘Youth work & the sector’) looks to the economic future for Australia, but does not appear to have made much mention of Australia’s young people, who will be hugely affected by the growing cohort of older Australians, whom they will need to support, and some of whom they will be competing for work against as Australians work longer – sometimes into their seventies. Again, ACOSS has asked that the government take young people into account in its planning.

On a positive note, the strategy called Work Integrated Learning (WIL), a joint initiative between Universities Australia and industry groups, is forward-looking and recognises the fact that the world of work has changed for young people, and that even uni graduates need to be better prepared for their future roles by obtaining practical workplace experience (see ‘Transition & work’).

In addition, this week sees the end of the search for young people’s big ideas in the Foundation for Young Australians’ Innovation Nation program. FYA realises that some of the best ideas for the future will come from young people themselves, but that these young people need a helping hand to get their ideas started. Coincidentally, the 2024 Social Enterprise Awards close this week, and winners will be announced next month. These awards acknowledge the growing importance of social enterprises to the Australian economy; these are businesses that employ or assist large numbers of young Australians.

On top of our news stories we have our usual monthly round-up of conferences, our listing of recently published books and The Sector, which this month shines the spotlight on Naked Ambition, an organisation that works to support the careers of young professional women.

Happy reading!