A More Youth-Centered Policy Development Perspective in NEET Policies

Abstract

Understanding young people’s needs from their own perspective is important for effective policy making. The Youth Guarantee (YG) has been successful in providing training, job search assistance, monitoring, and public work programs for vulnerable young people (NEETs). However, the YG primarily focuses on economic aspects, ignoring multidimensional social problems faced by this vulnerable group. Our chapter focuses on the factors behind the need and on the potential of young people’s contribution to policy-making making it more youth-centered. Recent academic discussions have focused on improving policy development processes beyond the classic or rationalist approach, incorporating cognitive biases, power factors, the multiplicity of actors, and the importance of the environment. To address these challenges, we present the results of a multi-country thought experiment that revealed that the national government is the most important actor in policy development for NEETs, followed by public employment services, local government, civil society organizations, and regional governments. Subsequently, we explore the potential benefits for policy development of new design thinking approaches based on the case example of the Reinforced YG of Estonia. The Estonian approach aims to address the multidimensionality of social problems faced by vulnerable young people and to promote a design-based policy development mindset, creating new avenues for support and services.

Author Heidi Paabort was a participant and observer in the co-creation process of the Estonian example cited in the article.

6.1 Introduction

Young people not in Employment, nor in Education, or Training (NEET) is a label referring to those aged 15–29 who are not enrolled in formal education or work (Mascherini et al., 2012). NEETs are increasingly at the center of academic and policy-making debates aiming at the development of national policies for responding to young people’s complex solution needs. According to Eurostat (2020), the number of NEETs is on a downward trend, but the NEET rate is still higher than the European average in ten Member States (e.g., Italy, Greece). While the situation is slowly stabilizing, several research studies related to the target group (e.g., Kusa & Jasiak, 2020) have nevertheless highlighted that supporting young people’s ever-evolving needs still requires several actions in different areas. The European Commission (2021) set out guidelines for Member States to achieve higher employability, better skills, stronger social protection systems, and a near-term target to reduce the share of young people in NEETs from 12.6% in 2019 to 9% in 2030. In line with this, the European Commission encouraged Member States to implement a new, strengthened Youth Guarantee (YG) with the funding of the European Union where young people under the age of 30 to support young people to find quality jobs, improve their education, or have access to an apprenticeship or a traineeship within 4 months of leaving school or becoming unemployed (European Commission, 2020).

YG interventions have reached young people mostly in countries that have developed partnerships between the public and the private sectors, including social enterprises and civil society institutions (Erdogan et al., 2021; Stabingis, 2020; Zhartay et al., 2020). Effective interventions have considered the different needs of young people when supporting them as a whole, and solutions have focused on improving the overall well-being of the young person, provided in a caring environment (Jonsson et al., 2022; Poštrak et al., 2020; Simmons, 2017). Amongst them, it is considered that the more vulnerable NEETs are likely to require longer-term and more holistic interventions to avoid the disproportionate negative impacts of risks that threaten this demographic group (European Commission, 2020). However, due to NEETs increasing vulnerabilities, policy-making has become more complex (Hooghe & Marks, 2013), translating into the need to support young people across sectors (Gaspani, 2019) and calling for coordination between many service providers (Carcillo & Königs, 2015; Mascherini, 2019). Policy agreements are seen as a solution to address these issues in a more structured way (O’Reilly et al., 2018). The YG has been successful in countries that have implemented comprehensive and well-funded programs providing young people with training, job search assistance, monitoring, subsidized employment, and public work programs.

One significant criticism made to the YG is, however, that it emphasizes mainly the economic aspects associated with NEETs, with most of the indicators developed to track this element such as the NEET or youth unemployment rates (European Commission, 2017). Although low economic security issues may be a significant consequence of becoming and staying in the NEET condition, there are additional individual and societal effects associated with this phenomenon, including social exclusion, marginalization, lack of trust in political institutions, lack of social capital, and political participation, as well as mental and physical health outcomes (Caroleo et al., 2020; Quintano et al., 2018) which merit being addressed in the YG context. Focusing on the economic outcomes may be a result of the framing and labeling of NEETs and consequently as a kind of deviation from the normal transition of life of young people. The new period of Youth Guarantee has now opened up to build on lessons learned, such as the fact that there is no longer a match between young people’s needs for solutions and the opportunities created through interventions. The European Commission through the Knowledge Hub’s good practices offers opportunities to create many new untapped channels to better understand vulnerable youth (Santos-Brien, 2018). An analysis of the good practices from Member States found through the Knowledge Hubs allows us to see that the majority of interventions are both coordinated and funded in a rather top-down way. At the same time, according to Butkeviciene (2009), ‘bottom-up’ approaches are more effective than ‘top-down’ initiatives because they consider local problems and involve local stakeholders. These pieces of evidence are also supported by the emergence of a new public governance approach in the public sector, where, according to Lepik and Kangro (2020), the focus is on creating shared (including societal) value through action rather than on public good and choice. Based on Poštrak et al. (2020), understanding young people’s well-being and needs from their own perspective and involving them in addressing their own needs is important for effective policy making. Paabort et al. (2023) add to this, by emphasizing that there is currently not enough scientific production on what young people in the target group themselves think about youth involvement in policy-making.

In a nutshell, we find that the economy-based approach to NEETs in terms of policy development may be too narrow because it ignores the multidimensionality of social problems lived by this group of vulnerable young people. In other words, and based on the foregoing knowledge, our aim is to address the need to understand the different factors that contribute to the challenges of policy-making in relation to young people in the NEET condition, with a particular focus on strengths approach whereby the potential of young people themselves is also considered a central piece of policymaking. To achieve our aim, we are proposing to combine a new method based on the design thinking approach with the experience of development of the Reinforced Youth Guarantee of Estonia which employs the codesign approach.

We will first start by presenting the basic assumptions of the “Rationalist” policy development approach which dominated the policymaking arena for many years. We will also show that these assumptions are largely unrealistic leading to a hyperrationality of the relevant actors in policy development with every deviation from policies being explained by the irrationality of actors. Afterward, we will show the multiplicity of the relevant stakeholders and multidimensionality of priorities in policy development for NEETs, based on a survey conducted with the participation of the COST Action Rural NEET Youth Network, conducted by it Working Group 5, which is dedicated to scientific coordination. Then, we propose a method for new policy development for NEETs which is based on the design thinking approach as an alternative to the failure of the classical approach for addressing the multiple challenges faced by this group of vulnerable young people. Finally, we make an in-depth exploration of the Estonian Reinforced Youth Guarantee program as it constitutes a good starting point to understand how a design based policy development mindset may be helpful to overcome NEETs challenges.

6.2 “Rationalist” Project of Policy Development

The rationalist paradigm of policy development started in the early 1930s when rationalization meant bringing scientific knowledge and expertise to the state administration. The rationalist approach (from now on referred to as the classical model) started several analytical techniques such as cost-benefit analysis, operations and systems research, and linear programming. The major skill for policy developers was not possessing detailed knowledge about the topic; they were experts in making analyses by using “scientific methods” (Radin, 2019).

One major challenge for the rationalization of policy development was the difficulty of picking one of several possible solutions to a given problem. For the classical approach, developing alternative policies and using a filter of political and economic feasibility is one of the earlier steps of policy development. The first important dimension of the rationalist perspective was technical feasibility corresponding to the capability to implement the solution, while the second main dimension of this approach was political feasibility, referring to the willingness of the political actor to use this policy which was included in the equation (Meltsner, 1972). Policy analysts’ function was to evaluate policy alternatives regarding desired and largely economic goals by using engineering techniques such as the Cost Benefit Analysis, which quantifies costs and relates them to outputs (Cairney, 2021; Dunn, 2017).

As efficiency is accepted as the major economic criterion by the classical model, recent discussions led to the enlargement of the requirements by including intangible and non-economic criteria such as adequacy, equity, responsiveness, and appropriateness (Dunn, 2017). For example, Bardach and Patashnik (2019) list “equality, equity, fairness, justice” and “freedom, community, and other ideas” as other examples of such criteria. There are some newly developed methods to address the incapacity of the classical approach to properly integrate intangible and non-economic criteria in policy development, such as considering optimizing multiple criteria or satisfying multiple goals. Multiple Criteria Analysis is described as “defining the criteria that emerge from the cost, effectiveness, political feasibility, and implementation capability categories and use them to systematically examine each alternative,” combining economic goals and the feasibility criteria. Alternative policies are weighted using these criteria—the client and the analyst develop weights—and the best one has been chosen (Radin, 2019).

Even when incorporating new criteria and methods, the classical approach remains limited, and its ambition to impose rationality on policies by excluding political preferences is unrealistic, particularly when dealing with complex social situations or groups such as NEETs. Hence, the role of politics must be considered in the processes of policy development in two dimensions. First, the definition of the problem is political because problems do not exist by themselves: society constructs them (Cairney, 2021). All problems are related to the societal structure to a degree, but also, they become “social” when they attract public attention. In the public sphere, there is a kind of competition between different “problems,” and sometimes, because of moral panic, some problems attract the attention of society, relevant actors, and policymakers (Clarke & Cochrane, 1998; Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988). Secondly, policymakers, in general, cannot be objective as have their values, priorities, and ideological preferences. Stone (1997), for instance, proposes that this approach ignores the emotions of actors. Hence, the problem detection phase is highly subjective and dependent on contextual factors such as analysts’ values and political views while feasibility depends on policymakers’ political and ideological preferences, due to their rather limited political agendas driven by ideological, institutional, and cognitive barriers (Baumgartner & Jones, 2010).

Another major limitation of the rationalist approach to policy development stems precisely from ignoring politics in the evaluation phase. Stone (1997) states that all criteria, including economic ones, are political. The definition of efficiency is highly dependent on questions about who determines the main goal, who benefits from different goals, and how to define resources to balance decision-making. Meanwhile, the equity criterion is related to the definition of which groups must be included but choosing a method to evaluate alternative policies is highly politically motivated (Cairney, 2021; Weimer & Vining, 2017).

Below, Table 6.1 presents different roadmaps of policy development, starting from the definition of the problem to making a decision and making recommendations. Different authors adopted the basic five-step policy development approach to respond to criticisms of hyper-rationalization.

Table 6.1 Comparison of different roadmaps (adapted from Cairney, 2021)

The classical or rationalist approach has been at the center of the development of the NEET concept and of policy development in this domain. From the beginning, the objective of the policy action was to identify, within the framework of the European Employment Strategy, the group of non-employed young people who were not developing actions to improve their human capital (Serracant, 2014). This definition as a concept attracted different criticisms. To begin with, the concept seems to exclude heterogeneity of this group. There are, indeed, different typologies of NEET, thus a single definition of the target group restricts the effectiveness of policies (Furlong, 2006; Mascherini, 2019; Paabort et al., 2023). Secondly, reducing the NEET notion to an individual trait is problematic because it refers to “people than situations,” ignoring structural factors such as inequalities or social policies (Brown, 2017; Holte, 2018; Serracant, 2014; Thompson, 2011). Consequently, policy development in different contexts led to the stigmatization of NEETs as lacking motivation and skills (Cabases Pique et al., 2016; Strecker et al., 2021); or as being “risky” economic subjects (McPherson, 2021). All this adds to evidence coming out from some studies showing how different discourses dominate the development of youth policies such as the lack of young people’s participation in economic activities or immaturity of youth, in the case of Finland (Mertanen et al., 2020) and victimization of youth in the case of Sweden (Jonsson et al., 2022).

6.3 Content and Priorities of the Relevant Stakeholders

To deliver more effective policymaking models, it is crucial to understand the various stakeholders working with or making research on NEETs. This goal can be facilitated by mapping the actors supporting young people in the NEET condition. However, this is a complex task as it requires the participation of multiple actors involved with the target group. Additionally, it is challenging to create a global stakeholder map with active agents and their priorities, since every social problem has local, national, and global components. Nonetheless, a multi-country thought experiment could help us comprehend the policymaking landscape, key actors, and policy agendas.

To address this challenge, we surveyed the members of the COST Action Rural NEET Youth Network on issues related to policies for NEETs. We asked them to list relevant policy actors and their priorities related to policies addressing this group of vulnerable young people. Forty-two members representing 19 countries answered the questionnaire. Below we summarise the survey results, which formed the basis of the stakeholder mapping exercise.

According to Table 6.2, the major actor in the policy development towards NEETs is the national government: 36 out of 42 participants put the government among the five most important actors. The national government is followed by public employment services (31) and the local government (26). More than half of the participants stated civil society organizations (24), and for 17 participants, regional governments are the most important actors in policy development. Development agencies and business organizations are not among the most frequently stated actors. An important point here is that only two participants state labor unions. Since the NEET problem has generally been perceived as a labor market problem, such an exclusion shows the limitations of the existing policy development perspective. Other actors listed by the participants are educational institutions and agricultural development cooperatives. Another interesting finding is that only two participants listed youth organizations—The National Youth Council and The Agency for Youth and Sport—another indicator of exclusion of the most important stakeholder of the problem, the youth sector. These findings show that policy development is highly centralized in participating countries, giving extraordinary power to national governments and national employment agencies. The role assigned to local and regional governments may be accounted for attempts for localization of solutions. Meanwhile, the lack of labor unions and youth associations must be analyzed in detail.

Table 6.2 Most frequently stated actors in NEET policy development

We also asked participants to pick the major motivations of these actors from a list of nine policy objectives. These results are presented in Table 6.3.

Table 6.3 Most frequently stated objectives in NEET policy development

Our results show that the most important policy motivation is creating employment followed by improving skills. Facilitating school-job transition and reducing inequalities are two other leading motivations. Stimulation of economic growth and competitiveness are among the frequently stated motivations. However, providing economic support to youth during their job search process and facilitating the match between labor demand and supply are relatively less frequently mentioned motivations. Thus, economic priorities are the leading motivations of policies targeting NEETs according to our survey.

The correspondence map that is presented in Fig. 6.1 adds to our discussion by intersecting the leading policy actors with their motivations for developing policies targeting NEETs. Correspondence analysis is an analytical technique for displaying the relationship between two variables, in our case actors and their motivations. Motivations located closer to actors show that these participants more frequently stated these motivations compared to other actors and motivations. If an actor or motivation is located closer to the center of the map, it shows an agreement on these issues (Greenacre, 2010).

Fig. 6.1

Correspondence map intersecting actors and their motivations

According to the above figure, stimulating competitiveness and economically supporting people are perceived as the main motivations of national and local governments. Similarly, stimulating economic growth is closer to national and local governments. On the lower right quadrant of the map, we observe that reducing inequalities is close to development agencies and civil society organizations. It is also possible to state that reducing inequalities and economically supporting people are relatively closer to the local government, meaning that these distributional goals are assigned to the local authorities such as local governments and development agencies.

On the top of the correspondence map, we observe that labor market-related motivations are closer to the economic actors. Facilitating the match between labor demand and labor supply is perceived as closer to labor unions, business organizations, and employment agencies. Labor unions, business organizations, and regional governments are closer to creating employment motivation. Facilitating school-job transitions and improving skills are closer to civil society organizations and employment agencies.

In sum, the correspondence map shows us how motivations for policies are diversified; different levels of government—national, regional, and local governments—are perceived as being motivated by stimulating economic growth and competitiveness and creating employment. The social dimensions of the NEET condition are related to local actors, development agencies, and civil society organizations.

Figure 6.2 presents a network analysis of actors and motivations. It is a bipartite network map combining two different layers, actors, and their motivations. Indeed, social network analysis allows us to understand any field not by only focusing on the relative positioning of actors and policies; additionally, it also considers the relationship between actors, objectives, actors, and objectives (Wasserman & Faust, 1994).

Fig. 6.2

Cocitation network map of actors and motivations

Similar to Fig. 6.1, the network map shown in Fig. 6.2 illustrates the central role of the national government on the map. This agency is connected to almost every policy, especially stimulating economic growth, facilitating school-job transition, and facilitating the match between labor demand and labor supply. Moreover, the national government is motivated to support people during their job search process and reduce inequalities. Another centrally located actor is the local government, which seems to be connected with reducing inequalities together with development agencies; facilitating school-job transition and the match between demand and supply in the labor market and employment agencies. Public employment services are close to creating employment and facilitating the match between labor demand and labor supply. Labor unions are close to these public agencies in the network map. Together with regional governments, employment agencies are closely related to the motivation of creating employment. Improving skills, stimulating competitiveness, and economically supporting people are motivations of civil society organizations. Business organizations are located on the top of the network map and are mainly motivated by stimulating competitiveness. Thus, the network map of actors and motivations further supports our argument about the centrality of the national government, while confirming the marginalized roles of labor unions and business organizations. Moreover, this map also demonstrates that distributional policies are in the domain of the local government and civil society organizations.

As the network of actors and motivations was bipartite, there is a need to analyze each network separately. Figure 6.3. illustrates separately the distribution of actors and motivations.

Fig. 6.3

Separate cocitation network of actors and motivations

Figure 6.3 shows the centrality of the national government sharing the same motivations with almost every stakeholder. Local governments, employment agencies, regional governments, and civil society organizations are closely connected to this central agent. Meanwhile, business organizations, labor unions, and development agencies have peripheral roles based on their motivations.

When we focus on the motivations network, we observe that several motivations have central roles. Facilitating school-job transition, creating employment, and stimulating economic growth are keystones of the motivations’ network. On the other hand, stimulating competitiveness relates to stimulating economic growth and creating employment. Reducing inequalities is closely connected with supporting people during their job search and improving skills, which may be accepted as a kind of social triad. Facilitating the match between labor demand and supply is in the same triangle as stimulating economic growth and improving skills, with a focus on the market. This figure clearly shows that the economic agendas are central to developing NEET policies, while the social consequences of being in the NEET condition are perceived as being peripheral. Similarly, economic growth and adjustment of labor demand and supply may be accepted as long-term problems.

6.4 Changing the Perspective: Potential of Co-creation and Design Thinking as a Human-Centred Approach in NEET Policy

As we have discussed in the introduction section, recent academic discussions have focused on improving the policy development process beyond the classic or rationalist approach. There are some attempts to criticize idealized processes of policy development, while making them more realistic by including the cognitive biases, the power factor, the multiplicity of actors, and the importance of the environment (Bacchi, 2009; Cairney, 2021; Radin, 2019; Stone, 1997; Sucha & Sienkiewicz, 2020).

In recent years, the dissemination of research literature on policy-making for young people in the NEET condition has been complemented by co-creation and design-thinking approaches. There is no standard definition of a co-creative approach based on Voorberg et al. (2013) and Windsor (2017). Still, Pedanik et al. (2021), for example, have pointed out that co-creation is a concept that encompasses all stages of service planning and delivery, considering the needs of the target group and the capabilities of service providers. In particular, it is seen as a generic concept or a needs-led design process (Voorberg et al., 2013; Windsor, 2017), where different actors work together to create agreed public services. It is essential to observe that the process results in a consensual solution, first and foremost, to develop and implement new practices. An important factor in co-creation is the continuous (further) development of the service (intervention) that is created, which, according to Osborne (2018), helps to continuously develop the service precisely in response to the needs of the client.

Design thinking is also a concept, method, or process to respond to complex design problems in the design sector. It is defined as a “human-centered approach to problem-solving”. It is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible. It is a non-linear process that converts social problems (Baker & Moukhliss, 2020) into opportunities and solves design problems by focusing on “what is desirable from the users’ perspective, what is technically feasible, and what is commercially viable for the organization.” (Kimbell, 2011:294). This approach visualizes and brings different constraints to the table during the design process. The steps in the process are presented in Fig. 6.4. Including the following tasks: (1) map the stakeholders; (2) define the problems; (3) design the policy; (4) prototype & test; and (5) communicate.

Fig. 6.4

A model of design thinking based policy analysis

6.5 Design Thinking Approach Through the Estonian Example of Creating Policies for NEET

There is limited information in the literature on the inclusion of NEETs in policy-making using the design-thinking method or the co-creation approach (Paabort et al., 2023). One of the few known countries which adopted a co-creation and a design-thinking approach at the same time to policy development aiming at NEETs is Estonia. Therefore, we detail this case as an exemplary illustration of new policy development avenues for this group of vulnerable young people.

Co-creation and design-thinking were used as the methodological basis for the Reinforced YG Guidelines’ new action line of the YG Estonia Action Plan. The plan upholds the “Implementation of a cooperation model for support and services for young people in NEET situations” for the years 2023–2029 (Paabort & Kõiv, 2022). The process of setting up the action line involved all the different actors. The state decision was based on the nationally agreed principle (Ministry of Social Affairs, 2022) that young people are the experts in their own lives, and for this reason, they know how they want to get the support they need at different stages of their personal development. The co-creation approach and the involvement of the target group resulted in several thematic studies in Estonia (e.g., Käger et al., 2020; Melesk et al., 2021). In the case of Estonia, co-creation was seen as a way of thinking underpinning the process of service creation at both the service planning and delivery stages, where different parties find the best practical solution through equal partnership, empowering each other and seeing the links between common parts of the issue. The technical implementation of the process was carried out using design thinking-based steps.

For the pilot development of this strategy of using the concept of co-creation and for implementing the process through the design-thinking approach in Estonia, a neutral party was found through a procurement process, which set up the initial process and involved all the necessary parties. The most important thing was to reach a consensus between the parties, regardless of position, to find the best way to support young people (Education and Youth Board, 2021). Below we describe how the process was developed, step by step, according to Fig. 6.4.

6.5.1 Mapping

The first step of designing a human-centred approach is to draw a field map using Stakeholder Analysis (Aligica, 2006; Dobel, 2005). This map must cover the main actors (stakeholders), including the user, their priorities, and the relationship between these actors. In the case of Estonia, in-depth document analysis—previous policies, interventions, stakeholders, and key learning experiences—was first carried out to map the context (Pedanik et al., 2021). The process included thematic meso-, macro-, and micro-level cooperation partners: ministries, umbrella associations, implementers of interventions, municipalities, associations representing young people, and the target group itself (Fig. 6.5).

Fig. 6.5

Involved local and national stakeholders in the design process

6.5.2 Define the Problem

The second stage of design-based political analysis involves collaboratively integrating the previous stage’s findings. The classical model of political analysis leaves this initiative to the policy analysts to mitigate politicians’ irrational and short-term oriented interventions. The design-based approach encourages the engagement of stakeholders in the problem definition stage. Bacchi (2009) proposes focusing on the problematization of any issue instead of accepting it as given. The problematization process will enable the policy analyst to formulate his/her own argument in the last stage. The second stage of the design process is required to understand the needs of stakeholders, not only direct beneficiaries but also policymakers and other actors. This stage will also facilitate integrating irrational elements such as cognitive biases, emotions, beliefs, and prejudices. Ethnographic methods can be used to collect the stories and narratives of the stakeholders. The problem definition stage gives the designer a Point of View (POV); in the case of policy analysis, the multiplicity of actors requires the development of multiple POVs with different priorities. This engagement must be dialogical, and empathy to understand the needs of other parties is critical.

In the case of the YG Estonia Action Plan, a series of discussions were carried out between the parties to understand the participants’ perceptions, patterns, prejudices, and values about the nature of NEETs. The process carried out in Estonia included interviews and ethnographic observation of NEETs and professionals working with young people, as well as co-creative discussions between different actors supporting young people, which resulted in the development of both possible personas and persona-based solutions (Pedanik et al., 2021; Social Insurance Board, 2021), where the personas were considered to be an aggregated portrait of the client of the support activity.

Through the interviews, the young people’s problems, needs, and perceived realities were mapped in depth because a more general mapping of young people’s needs and expectations is important to help experts working with young people to understand how young people in NEET situations function in their daily lives and what obstacles they face. The survey results helped to complement and/or to develop services for young people in NEET situations and support them in the most appropriate way.

The ideate stage of design thinking corresponds to the classical policy analysis model’s feasibility, evaluation, and prediction stages. The human-centered approach tries to bring more human factors to the policy development process, meaning all ignored factors will be considered during the design phase.

6.5.3 Design the Policy

The design thinking approach divides the step of designing the policy into two separate phases, creation and decision. In this stage, the participation of all relevant stakeholders is also critical to bring different perspectives into the creation phase, as the diversity of opinions is accepted as the best way to have viable solutions to problems. In the political domain, new policies are always linked with existing ones, so this stage must start with presenting the existing policies. Based on the multiple POVs, the team tries to develop new policies after being informed about the available policy instruments (Dam & Siang, 2019).

The design thinking approach is a process of generating as many solutions as possible without worrying about technical and political feasibility problems. It has the constraints of technical feasibility, usability, and profitability, but the action space of the product designers is larger compared to policymakers. The decision stage is more difficult than a typical product development process, as it requires the participation of all stakeholders in the design process. Different voting procedure alternatives are possible (Dam & Siang, 2019).

In the Estonian case, the third stage revealed the main problems and barriers of NEETs by delivering and exploring six personas of young people in the NEET condition. Those personas were used as input to the description of the future model (Pedanik et al., 2021). The resulting future model was validated with a co-creation process core group like ministries and implementation members. The process resulted in a two-tiered set of proposals on how to know more about, locate and support young people at risk or in a NEET situation at the local level. The proposals and guidelines in the finalized document were sent out to both municipalities and national actors to ensure a common understanding of needs and possible solutions (Pedanik et al., 2021; Social Insurance Board, 2021).

6.5.4 Prototype and Test

The next step of the design thinking approach is the prototyping phase, where designers develop small and inexpensive prototypes of the solution selected in the ideation phase and open this prototype to the user experience. It is possible to use high- and low-fidelity techniques to evaluate the outcome of the prototypical tool or intervention. High-fidelity techniques are Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), which are experimental forms of impact evaluation advocated by international organizations such as the World Bank or UNICEF (Gibson et al., 2017; Pearce & Raman, 2014); systematic reviews of RCTs (Oliver et al., 2008; Uman, 2011); or a pilot study limited to single geography bringing detailed quantitative and qualitative information about the desired outcomes of the policy (Gibson et al., 2017; Pearce & Raman, 2014).

Storytelling, service advertisement, video prototyping, and roleplaying among others constitute low-fidelity techniques. A storytelling approach involves experts and practitioners sharing their experiences relevant to the above-developed prototype, and testaments of the beneficiaries of similar programs may be accepted as indirect data about the performance of the policy (Cairney, 2021; Cairney & Oliver, 2017; Dam & Siang, 2019).

In the case of the Estonian example, in this phase, a survey was carried out with ten interviews and four young people with NEET status. Six experts whose daily work involves working with young people with NEET status were also interviewed. The interviews were used to validate the client journeys developed in the workshops, in order to get feedback from the young people on the journeys developed by the experts, and to incorporate the young people’s views and perceptions of which current practices are not working, the reasons for this and what they think the process of accessing support should be. As a result of the survey interviews, the profiles of young people, based on the experts’ experiences and knowledge, were completed and described in depth.

An important factor of co-production is the continuous co-production or (further) development of the service (intervention), which, according to Osborne (2018), contributes to the continuous development of the service, specifically in response to the needs of the client. In the Estonian case, based on the document, a final framework for a collaborative model for young people in NEETs has been developed, which will be the basis for a pilot project in 2023, where 10 local municipalities will be able to implement it in their area with the needs of the established approach (Social Insurance Board, 2021). Also, it was important to validate the results of the co-design process with institutions that were not directly involved in the process but whose work could be related to or be influenced by the guidelines of Estonian’s YG. In the context of the Estonia YG, the lack of linkages between different sectoral structures and guidelines is an important limiting barrier to enabling cooperation at the local level (Paabort & Beilmann, 2021). As a result of the pilot project, an action plan for the next 5 years for NEETs and those at risk of becoming NEETs is being prepared in Estonia, which in turn will serve as a basis for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Information Technology to direct additional resources to local authorities to ensure that changes and approaches based on the needs identified by young people receive state support in the period 2024–2029 (Social Insurance Board, 2021).

6.5.5 Communicate

The final step in classical policy-making and design thinking is the communication of results—the communication phase. If the output of the policy analysis is a policy proposal, and its implementation in real life depends on its acceptance by policymakers, then the final product of the design thinking approach is ready to be implemented in the real world after completing the team’s assessment.

The classical approach leaves the responsibility of communication to the analyst. It is accepted that alternative policies in different problem domains are competing, and the policy proposal’s survival depends on the quality of its communication. The engagement of the relevant stakeholders is the key element of design thinking. Hence some of the receivers are represented to a degree in the formulation of the policy proposal. For example, Cairney and Kwiatkowski (2017) propose to “Understand your audience and tailor your response” and “engage with real-world policymaking rather than waiting for a ‘rational’ and orderly process to appear” as two of their three steps approaches. These two proposals are already embedded in the design thinking process. Similarly, Bardach and Patashnik (2019) advice to “gauge your audience” is a task to be completed in the first phase of stakeholder mapping and empathizing.

The Estonian YG development was supported by the immediate involvement of different levels and parties in the operational phase of communication. Therefore, it was already possible to foresee risks during the process, mitigate them through joint discussions, and prepare the legal framework for the implementation of ideas.

Mainly there are suggestions to use stories in the communication stage (Davidson, 2017). Cairney and Rummery (2018) also propose communicating the results through storytelling, focusing on the emotions and beliefs of the audience using stories. Stone (1997) also describes narrative stories as the principal means for defining and contesting problems. For Rhodes (2019), the importance given to storytelling indicates the increased popularity of the “interpretive approach”. Storytelling is always accepted as an important component of the design thinking process, especially during the Empathise stage and several strategies are developed to improve the effectiveness of storytelling (Elmansy, 2018; Hunsucker & Siegel, 2015).

In the Estonian example, storytelling was used in a collaborative policy document, where the personas created in the design process enabled different actors supporting young people, such as local government, the unemployment fund, youth work institutions, social services, etc. to recognize the potential of their own field and make the necessary connections from a youth support perspective. This was done from the point of view of knowing, finding, contacting, supporting, and following up young people. Thus, the linking of the six-person stories into a common case management model of support needs helped to understand what the local authority needs to be able to offer in supporting young people. As the document was created in cooperation with the national institutions responsible for the YG Estonia Action Plan, it provides a shared vision and understanding of resources through which to move forward in further cooperation. In turn, this will also allow for a harmonized understanding of how to describe and analyze the effectiveness of youth support.

Figure 6.6 summarizes the co-creation approach, national agreements, equal roles of the parties, broad awareness of good practices, and the real needs of young people in developing the Estonian YG Plan. This model of cooperation can be adapted to the context of different local authorities in Estonia and across other countries. Its implementation, with the support of public resources, will be a multi-level learning experience, which in turn will allow for continuous development of policies.

Fig. 6.6

The logic and steps of the design process of one of support measures Estonia YG Plan

6.6 Conclusion

Our article shows that there is a need for a number of shifts in services and policy-making for NEET young people. This is even more required in a world facing a new set of problems, namely polycrises such as pandemics, climate change, inequality, polarization, and wars. These new challenges require the development of new instruments to develop better policies, putting the perspective of the subject of these policies. Our methodological approach and lessons from the Estonian experience of co-design may help us to have better instruments. First, we need to accept the fact that changing the framing of the NEET “problem” will open new avenues of policy research. Secondly, this new perspective will allow us to design better policies and develop better solutions for NEETs.

6.6.1 New Research Avenues

• Beyond the economic approach to NEETs. There is a need to reframe the situation of NEETs as a multidimensional problem and focus on non-economic and social consequences such as well-being, self-esteem, and confidence.

• Bring in young people’s voices to research efforts. Top-down data collection efforts such as surveys are not sufficient to understand the perspective of young people. The importance of understanding young people’s differences and their reactions to established systems, allows us to better understand how young people perceive themselves in order to reduce the contradictions between young people and established systems (Görlich & Katznelson, 2018).

• Diversify research methods. Bringing the voice of the youth back to the policy development process, we need to rely on multimethod and multi-context research, by using different data collection methods and triangulation conducted in diverse settings to duly describe between- and within-country variation of the NEET phenomena.

6.6.2 New Policy Development Process

• Bottom-up policy development approaches are needed. The “classical” rationalist approach focuses on the development of effective and efficient policies and these criteria has been technocratically developed. Our approach shows that a bottom-up approach by putting the youth at the center of policy development will be more inclusive.

• Redefine NEETs from the policy perspective. The definition of NEETs as a problem or as a failure of young people to adapt themselves to labor market conditions leads to stigmatization of them and stigmatized young people who cannot put their own perspective to the policy development process. This conceptualization must be overcome.

• Co-creation is key for new policy developments aiming at NEETs. Developing co-creative environments in policy-making may attract young people to the policy development process. Mascherini’s (2018) categorization of policies targeting NEETs also supports the idea that policies have to see a wider context and need to support young people at different stages of their lives, not just during the transition from school to work. For that, we need to explore their own experiences to further understand their real needs and to develop possible coping strategies. This vision is line with the need to include the voice of young people is also stipulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

• The design thinking approach is being adopted as an increasingly used threshold for creating people-centered policies. While this approach may not always be linear and is more complex than traditional service delivery, as it requires the participation of all stakeholders in a design process where consensus needs to be constantly sought, it does allow for the immediate involvement of stakeholders, where already during the co-creative process it is possible to foresee risks and mitigate them through joint discussion, while preparing the legal space for the implementation of ideas.

• Coordination is key for the success of policy development for NEETs. A more open mindset and a more coherent cross-sectoral understanding open up the possibility for social innovation, allowing for a better understanding of the nature of the target audience and the creation of new multidisciplinary collaborative forms expressed by young people themselves in the design process. This approach is also supported by the European Commission (2021) in its new guidelines for implementing the second period of the Youth Guarantee.