Isla’s Story

Abstract

Isla was 18 years old when she began taking part in our research in February 2011. We first met her through an employability programme run by Fernside Council’s Looked After Children (LAC) team when Lisa was observing Cayden — a young man whose story we recounted earlier. Like Cayden, Isla had spent time in foster care but the biographies of these two young people are quite different. As we pointed out in Chapter 3, disaggregating the NEET category into more specific subgroups such as care leavers, young parents and young offenders can be helpful in understanding the complexity of what is, after all, a policy construct rather than a coherent social group. However, Isla’s story also illustrates the limitations of this approach. Not only were Isla’s circumstances and needs quite unlike Cayden’s; her story also shows how NEET sub-categories overlap in ways that shift with time. For both the young people themselves, and for practitioners working with them, the differing and perhaps conflicting priorities arising from complex needs and circumstances can intensify the challenges associated with each category taken individually, thus increasing the risk of further exclusion.