"Thinking about the future, what's gonna happen?"-How young people in Sweden who neither work nor study perceive life experiences in relation to health and well-being

Lessons Learned from an Intersectoral Collaboration between the Public Sector, NGOs, and Sports Clubs to Meet the Needs of Vulnerable Youths

The Norwegian Government emphasizes intersectoral collaboration to achieve health goals such as reducing social health differences. However, research shows that achieving fruitful collaboration between different organizations and the public sector is challenging. The sports sector is one potential partner for such collaboration. Although the Government calls for intersectoral collaboration that includes the sports sector, there are few concrete guidelines for how this may be implemented in practice. Guided by The Bergen Model of Collaborative Functioning, the purpose of this study was to explore factors that promote or inhibit collaboration in an intersectoral project involving the sports sector, NGOs, and public sector. The current project aimed to work towards creating health promoting activities aimed at vulnerable youths. Methods: A qualitative case study of the Sports Project with interviews of eleven collaborative partners. Results: Factors promoting collaboration amongst the different partners were having a common mission, an appreciation of the partners’ complementary skills and knowledge, and a consistent user perspective. Conclusions: By orienting the collaboration towards the users’ needs, the partners have succeeded in creating tailored health-promoting activities for vulnerable youths. However, a challenge remains in transforming the collaborative project into a sustainable structure.

Living in the shadow of unemployment -an unhealthy life situation: a qualitative study of young people from leaving school until early adult life

Background

Despite the magnitude of youth unemployment there is a lack of studies, which explore the relations between health experiences and labour market position in various contexts. The aim of this paper was to analyse health experiences among young people in NEET (not in education, employment or training) in relation to labour market position from leaving school until early adult life.

Method

The population consists of everyone (six women, eight men) who became unemployed directly after leaving compulsory school in a town in Northern Sweden. Repeated personal interviews were performed from age 16 until age 33. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Results

Health experiences can be viewed as a contextual process, related to the different phases of leaving school, entering the labour market, becoming unemployed and becoming employed. Perceived relief and hope were related to leaving compulsory school, while entering the labour market was related to setbacks and disappointments as well as both health-deteriorating and health-promoting experiences depending on the actual labour market position. Our overarching theme of “Living in the shadow of unemployment – an unhealthy life situation” implies that it is not only the actual situation of being unemployed that is problematic but that the other phases are also coloured by earlier experiences of unemployment .

Conclusion

A focus on young people’s health experiences of transitions from school into the labour market brings a new focus on the importance of macroeconomic influence on social processes and contextualised mechanisms from a life-course perspective.