The participants

The government currently defines the long-term unemployed as those who have been claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) for 12 months or more with a continuous claim. However, for the purposes of this study I chose to seek participants who identified themselves as having been unemployed for at least six months. I felt that by restricting my research to those who had claimed one specific benefit continuously for at least 12 months risked excluding those who chose not to claim benefits, along with those who claimed different benefits (such as health-related benefits or income support) but who still considered themselves unemployed. Further, I was concerned not to exclude those who had ‘experienced significant periods of worklessness but who were part of the ‘churn’ moving into and out of employment, work programmes and even in some cases education’ (Lawy and Wheeler, 2013: 163). This was something I was particularly aware of given the high incidence of short-term seasonal work in the South-West of England, a result of the contribution tourism and agriculture make to the economy. At the time the research was planned, six months was also the referral point for the New Deal for Young People (NDYP), the programme designed to offer additional support to 18 – 24 year olds to assist them into employment. This therefore seemed to imply that the six month period denoted a time past which 18 – 24 year olds were less likely to secure employment without assistance. It therefore provided a logical minimum period of time to use for the purposes of this research.

I initially anticipated accessing the majority of my participants via the mandatory welfare-to-work programme that 18 – 24 year old benefit claimants were referred to. By the point of data collection NDYP had been replaced by the Work Programme, which offered tailored support to benefit claimants of all ages. Unlike NDYP the Work Programme offered support to those claiming health benefits (but deemed capable of returning to work) and claimants of income support, along with claimants of JSA. The Programme therefore seemed to present the opportunity to speak to a wide variety of participants and, since it was a mandatory programme for most participants, the possibility of accessing those hardest to reach. However, negotiating access proved extremely challenging. Whilst it was relatively easy to agree access with local managers of the Programme (many of whom I knew from my previous work), when they checked with senior national managers, access was refused. It became clear that they were nervous about the prospect of an independent study being carried out with participants on the Government’s new flagship welfare-to-work programme. This was perhaps unsurprising given that the Programme was delivered by a range of regional providers who had been awarded the right to deliver the Programme through a bidding process. Despite my assurances that the focus of my research was the experiences of the participants, rather than the Work Programme, their reservations could not be overcome.

I had good knowledge of the different types of support available to long-term unemployed young adults. Therefore I was undeterred by this initial setback and instead pursued access to participants via services that could be engaged with on a voluntary basis. As a result the majority of the participants were accessed via the Prince’s Trust and a local provider of the Future Jobs Fund. The participants claimed a range of benefits, with some being entitled to benefits but choosing not to claim. From this perspective they were a diverse mix, yet it is important to acknowledge that the very fact they had accessed voluntary services made them slightly ‘easier to reach’ than if participants had been accessed through a mandatory programme. All of the participants were volunteers and were reminded frequently that they could opt out of the research process at any stage. They were given pseudonyms to

protect their anonymity, as were any people they named during the interviews. The research process and aims were also made clear from the outset, something which I felt was important in order to encourage engagement with the study. This elicited a range of questions from the participants who wanted to know, for example, who would read the research; how their interviews would be written up; how many participants I had spoken to in total and where they came from.

The sample was largely opportunistic, though ‘variety and diversity amongst the participants was achieved so that they included disadvantaged and marginalised young adults, those living in poorer urban and inner-city areas as well as young adults from more privileged backgrounds that would not normally be associated with long-term unemployment’ (Lawy and Wheeler, 2013: 164). As was described in Chapter 1, the data collection was undertaken during an economic downturn with high levels of unemployment. As such, a much broader group of young adults was affected by long-term unemployment than might otherwise have been the case. It was important to me that this situation was reflected in my research, and also that participants came from a range of urban, rural and semi-rural locales, representative of the region in which the research was undertaken. The sample comprised of a total of 19 young adults aged 18 – 24 years and ‘deliberately included young adults aged 18+ […] to ensure that all of the 18–24 cohort were represented in the data. [I] felt this was important given that young adults can claim Jobseeker’s Allowance from the age of 18’ (Lawy and Wheeler, 2013: 164).