According to Bell and Blanchflower (2011), unemployment among youths is one of the social challenges societies across the world are struggling to cope with and. An understanding of youth unemployment in the realm of social work requires a prior conceptualization of the term social work. Unfortunately, this is still crowded in mystery as many have painstakingly gamed the definition to no clear common point. Cree (2003) mentions that “it is almost impossible to find a simple definition of social work with which everyone is likely to agree”. However, Thompson (2000:12-14) opines that “Social work is what social workers do.” Other scholars have gone ahead to argue that;
We should not expect to find unanimity in books about social work, or even in accounts of social workers. Social work is always subject to competing claims of definition and practice and cannot be separated from the society in which
it is located. Rather social work has to be seen as a collection of competing and contradictory discourses that come together at a particular moment in time to frame the task of social work (Creed, 2003:4).
A broader conceptualisation of social work as a dicsipine and field is that its main concern has to do with supporting various categories of people, especially those who are vulnarable to be able to gain collective or personal well -being. In its application, people involved in Social Work as professionals are at all times expected to adhere to the value, techniques and principles associated with social work. These can include among many other things, providing counselling, physical and emotional support as well as advocate for the vulnerable members of the society.
Briar (1983: 211-215); Riches & Ternowetsky (1990) and Sherraden (1985), ratify that truly social work has had quite an extensive past in working with the jobless people nonetheless there has not been any precise emphasis on the work with unemployed youth.
Therefore, with the inadequate literature presented, suggestions from Sherraden (1985) that social workers can be involved in putting pressure on relevant authorities for appropriate employment policies. Similar sentiments are echoed by Ekelinen & Caswell (2003) who mention that a social worker can help support unemployed people through different channels including those that will enable them access social needs while for the employed people social workers can provide counselling.
Briar (1980) is concerned that social work as a profession is concerned with the social challenges that people face from time to time. However, despite its severity, unemployment as a social problem has not attracted the attention of many social workers.
Indeed, there are a number of studies that attempt to explain why social workers are reluctant to involve themselves in trying to tackle problems of unemployment(Briar, 1983). One of the prominent explanations is that unemployment seems to be strongly attached to economic issues as well as public administration more than sociology. For others, the detachment of social workers from unemployment has to do with lack of resources to venture in that area which needs massive investment to solve. Based on this, many social workers will choose to leave the problem to government and policy makers.
Another deterrent is associated with the question of whether social workers are trained to skilfully understand and tackle unemployment. The social work training manuals in many
places seems to avoid an in -depth analysis of unemployment. Also, there are those who look at the problem of unemployment as a personal weakness or failure and not a social problem. None of these explanations however touch on the core issues of unemployment especially its impact on the society.
According to Jianqiang et al., (2017) social workers have a duty to help in curbing the menace of youth unemployment. They argue that in spite of the fact that efforts have been directed towards providing a solution to youth unemployment, there has been a missing link. Social workers refer to this link as a social work perspective. Firstly, there has been a scholarly discussion placing the role of social workers on facilitating the formulation of suitable employment policies, collect data on the number of unemployed people and to assist people who are unemployed in job searching. Arguing that the above roles are not satisfactory enough, the researchers stress that social workers need proper skills and training as well as information about the job market especially for semi-skilled people and that inadequate involvement of social workers in performing these roles has elevated career civil servants to perform social work rules that require qualified social workers. In regard to being in a position of helping the jobless, the researchers find two key barriers to youth employment that social workers should be aware of. Namely:
✓ Transitional barriers: These tend to be more personal, focusing on both the employer’s and job seeker’s psychological and physical outlook. Employers tend to construct an individualistic, exploratory and adventurous perception of
‘generation Y’. On the contrary, the job searchers appear to be choosy and have certain job terms and conditions in mind for preferred jobs.
✓ Structural barriers: As opposed to transitional barriers that are basically individual, one can associate structural barriers with economic and social factors which make it difficult for young people to get stable jobs. These consist of economic conditions, segmentation of labour skills, obscured employment discrimination and the gap between school and work.
According to Briar (1983), the perpetual increase of unemployment rates across the globe has dictated the need for social workers to become more conscious of the consequence of this problem and become more proactive in giving unemployed people alternatives to
their lives. Davis (1967) opines that the origins of the social work discipline can be traced to the earlier struggles by people collectively to help the unemployed persons. Social workers are supposed to investigate. The decade long great depression that ended in 1939 social workers played a crucial role in explaining the challenges of unemployment at the time. Even today, it is not a surprise that some social workers continue to be on the forefront promoting the adoption of policies and legislations that can eradicate the problem of unemployment.
Social workers should be involved in providing guidance and counseling services, community outreaches and youth works or probation services among others to the unemployed young people who may have resorted to crime, drug addiction and commercial sexual activities as a result of the unemployment. Briar (1983) further states that social workers also offer advice to young people seeking employment. They should separate themselves from employers and other policymakers who put the blame of not being able to secure a job for the youths. Social workers can take up initiatives such as welfare -to -work programs and policies which loosely translates to the social workers being involved in the regulatory climate by encouraging people to participate in reducing welfare cases (Briar, 1983: 211 -215).
2.8. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ON EDUCATION AND YOUTH