The generation who fear they face a dead-end future

When we’re young we all have our dreams. Some of us want to be footballers, or pilots, doctors, even journalists, dare I say.

Not everyone ends up doing their “dream” job, for one reason or another, but a new report by The Prince’s Trust and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which supports the youth charity, says that thousands of young people from poorer backgrounds in this country believe they will achieve few, if any, of their goals in life.

The study shows that one in five young people in Yorkshire don’t think their career aims are achievable. It also highlights the growing aspiration gap between the UK’s richest and poorest young people with one in five in Yorkshire living below the poverty line, defined as young people living in households with less than 60 per cent of disposable income after housing costs.

According to the report, based on interviews with 2,311 people aged between 16 and 24 from across the UK, nearly one in five young people believe they will “end up on benefits for at least part of their lives”, and more than one in 10 think they will “end up in a dead-end job”.

These findings might not surprise many people, but they are a worrying indicator for the future state of this country. “The aspiration gap between the region’s richest and poorest young people is creating a ‘youth underclass’ – who tragically feel they have no future, and we simply cannot ignore this inequality,” says Sam Kennedy, regional director of The Prince’s Trust in Yorkshire and the Humber.

“Our research suggests that all young people tend to start life with similarly high aspirations. However, those from poorer homes are significantly more likely to lose confidence in their own abilities and ambitions as they approach adulthood.”

The long-term affects of poverty are often devastating leaving many young people feeling disillusioned and sidelined. This lack of confidence and opportunity hampers their future job prospects.

Syed Ali knows what it’s like to grow up in this kind of environment. He was raised in Hull with his retired parents and five brothers.

Both his mother and father suffered from poor health and he went to school wearing second- hand clothes and without enough money to pay for the books he needed to study.

“It was a struggle growing up like that. I felt I couldn’t compete with everyone else in the school because of my circumstances. It was a really bad time as we couldn’t afford the basic things that I needed. I felt as though life was going to be like that forever,” he says.

Syed wanted to become a teacher, but as the condition of his parents worsened, he became their full-time carer at the age of 12, missing out on large parts of his education.

His father encouraged him to return to school to complete his GCSEs, which he did. But with his parents ill he couldn’t go to college and instead worked part-time in a restaurant kitchen. “Going to college was not an option for me so I took any job so I could help pay for things at home.”

As his hopes and aspirations faded he found himself caught up with the wrong crowd, who spent their days drinking and taking drugs.

“I didn’t get into any trouble but I was just wasting my life away. It got to a point where I decided I wanted to take my life back. I thought my father wouldn’t want me to waste my life, so I decided to do something about it.”

He signed up for The Prince’s Trust Get Started With Football programme, gaining a Junior Football Organisers award accredited by the Football Association.

As well as helping him develop new skills it gave him the confidence he had been lacking and after completing the course he got a job working at Endeavour High School, in Hull, as a mentor and football coach.

Syed is just one example of how, with the right support and encouragement, young people can break free from the shackles of poverty and turn their lives around. This year, the Trust aims to help 50,000 vulnerable young people by arming them the skills needed to find a decent job.

As well as breaking down the pattern of low aspirations it has wider benefits for the UK economy both now and in the future, while for those like Syed, it is a lifeline. “The Prince’s Trust has really helped me achieve my dream of working with young people – something I didn’t think would be possible when I was growing up.”

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