What is the Problem with Non-Take-Up and Whose Problem is it? Youth Coaching – a Service for hard-to-reach Youth in Austria between Low-Threshold Status and Compulsory Usage

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ESF Exploratory Workshop “Young People’s Access to Support –
Non-Take-Up of Welfare Services as Social Disadvantage“
Bielefeld, 19–21 February 2015
What is the Problem with Non-Take-Up and Whose Problem is it?
Youth Coaching – a Service for hard-to-reach Youth in Austria
between Low-Threshold Status and Compulsory Usage
Alban Knecht (JKU Linz / Volkshilfe Österreich)
1.) Introduction
Research on non-take-up of social security benefits is very scarce in Austria. Up to now, data and
studies available on this issue solely refer to monetary social assistance. From them we know that
non-take-up rates range between 49% and 61% (Fuchs 2007). Knowledge about non-take-up of social
services is entirely non-existent. This working paper will try to shed light on why and for whom non-
take-up is a problem. To deal with these questions we will use examples from Youth Coaching,
counselling services for early school leavers, NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and
other young people who have only a limited outlook on a possible profession for themselves.
First there be will be an introduction of the Multi-Layer approach for explaining non-take-up
according to Dimmel (2009) (Section 2). Then follows an explanation of how Youth Coaching works,
with special focus on the claim for Low-Threshold (Section 3). This will serve as background for a
discussion of the different interests of the users of this programme and of the government as the
commissioning party (Section 4). A further step will explore the upcoming changes to the
programme, participation in which was voluntary in the past, but will be made compulsory in the
near future (Section 5).
2.) The Multi-Layer Approach of Dimmel
Dimmel (2009) defines four layers when analysing non-take-up of social assistance (Sozialhilfe): the
System Layer, the Resource Layer, the Behavioural Layer, and the Organisational Layer.
• The System Layer can contain reason for non-take-up like inadequate information about the
claim basis and service availability, but also inadequate services, which do not really solve the
problem of the client. Additionally, different non-coordinated services and a lack of available
information for clients can make the support system increasingly non-transparent.
• The Organisational Layer can contain inhibiting factors like physical distance and high-threshold
access instead of outreach to potential clients.
• The Resource Layer can contain non-take-up factors like a lack of information and knowledge of
the potential clients as well as a lack of competence and experience when dealing with
government agencies and services. In regards to social assistance it has been shown that
potential claimants had incorrect assumptions about the pre-conditions and rules regarding
claims.

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• The Behavioural layer can contain factors like shame, fear of stigmatisation, and pride, all of
which can prevent claims for known monetary support and other services. Again, in regards to
social assistance it has been shown that negative experiences with government agencies
prevented the willingness to file further claims.
This Multi-Layer approach for claiming social assistance offers a hint about what some of the
problems regarding non-take-up could be. According to the construction of the support programmes,
non-take-up of Social assistance seems to pose no problem for governmental organisations. A clearly
created asymmetry between government agency and client seems to imply a deliberate message of
scaring off potential clients. In extreme circumstances the lack of information, or even plenty of
information based on negative experiences with government agencies, might make the non-take-up
behaviour the lesser evil.
3.) Youth Coaching in Austria as a Low-Threshold Service
Youth Coaching is a counselling offer for early school leavers, school leavers without ideas about
their occupational future, NEETs, and young disabled persons who do not find an apprenticeship or
job. The service is voluntary and offers vocational and personal guidance. Depending on the
requirements of young people, it consists of a one-time conversation or long-term counselling which
usually ends when the young person enters a training programme, but sometimes continues even
after that.
The main idea of the programme is to help young people to develop a vocational perspective when
finishing his or her school career, when changing schools, or when school was left early. In Austria
compulsory schooling ends at the age of 15, or respectively, after nine years of schooling. Youth
Coaching aims to lower the number of NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) and early
school leavers: In Austria the NEET rate is 8.6% (78,000 NEETs, aged 18-24, Bacher et al. 2013) and
the rate of early school leavers is 7.3% (53,000 early school leavers, aged 18-24, Statistik Austria
2014; EU-15: 12.7%, EU-28: 11.9%).
Youth Coaching is largely based on an Employment Service for Disabled Persons. During the pilot
stage of the extended programme in 2012, the service was expanded to non-disabled persons in two
of nine Austrian provinces. Since 2014, Youth coaching is offered in all parts of Austria. Today more
than 300 youth coaches (converted into full-time equivalents) advice about 30,000 students each
year (Fliegenschnee 2013). This amount equals a quarter of a one-year cohort. In 2014 the
programme was funded with € 22 million (Sozialministerium 2014).
Since in Austria there is in addition to starting an apprenticeship also a “Vocational Training
Guarantee”, Youth Coaching can be seen as an attempt to minimize the non-take-up of these offers.
At the same time, it is anticipated that Youth Coaching by itself is not adequately adapted. This non-
take-up will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
To reach as many students as possible, Youth Coaching is mostly organised as an outreach
programme offered at schools, during classes and during the last school year. Teachers are supposed
to decide with the help of a “diagnostic” form which students could “need” or should use the service.

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(However, the collaboration between the school and the youth coaches does not work in all
provinces.) There are two additional ways to get in contact with young clients: They might use the
office-based services of Youth Coaching, or youth coaches are attached to low-threshold facilities for
young people like youth centres or other open spaces. Especially in Vienna the so-called “open youth
work” offers leisure activities like sport and games in youth centres and in parks. This low-threshold
strategy might be the best way to get access to hard-to-reach young people. But what does “low-
threshold” actually mean? Mayrhofer (2013) sees four dimensions: (1) a time-related dimension (a
minimum of limitations regarding opening hours and wait times or management of appointments),
(2) a room-related dimension (familiar room structures like e.g. offices structured like a cafe), (3) a
factual/content-related dimension (no narrow thematic limitation of the services offered, low-
priority on goals and reaching goals), and (4) a social dimension (Little or no obligation for the
participant. This could potentially be achieved by maintaining the anonymity of the user and the fact
that the offer is strictly voluntary). These dimensions offer a good summary of the low-threshold
strategy of Youth Coaching.
An workshop for officials on Youth Coaching came to the result that
“to reach young people who are not really part of the system, we will need – amongst other
things – organised coordination with low-threshold institutions outside of schools. Youth
coaching aims to be a bridge to and for young people on the fringes of the system. An
important part of the Youth Coaching concept is the integration into successive systems and
guidance for consequential measures. This Case Management approach is supposed to
integrate support measures into an overall concept. The success depends on if and how well
the different agencies work together.“ (ZSI 2013, p. 1)
The participants of this workshop saw new chances in the emphasis of the low-threshold strategy:
“New opportunities lie in the expansion or modification of the entire project scope for these young
people towards low-threshold and precondition-free measures with modular structures and without
compulsory attendance“ (ibid.). The project Spacelab, established in Vienna, realises this idea: It
consists of a low-threshold offer of Open Youth Work (in-door and outreach) which is combined with
the offer of counselling, training-on-the-job facilities on a daily basis and a production school. The
expected advantage of these services consists in the combination of low-threshold access and more
binding [obliging] offers within the same institution.
4.) Non-take-up of Youth Coaching
If Youth Coaching is viewed in context of the Multi-Layer model described above, it forms a different
picture compared to social assistance. It would appear that Youth Coaching is designed to minimized
access problems to the System Layer and Organisational Layer. Even the lack of information on the
client side is handled by using the outreach approach. This structure suggests that – in contrast to
Social Services – there is a large governmental interest in taking advantage of this offer.
But there are also indications that the Behavioural Layer contains reason for non-take-up: Since
Youth Coaching is only offered for young people who have no clear idea about their professional
path, their usage could be conceivably be associated with a certain stigma. This can be especially
serious when students are taken out of their regular classes and are counselled separately, and can

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lead to students who do not want to be counselled at all. Additionally students, who had several bad
experiences at school and were discriminated against, might have very low expectations of school-
like and school-supported offers like Youth Coaching to solve their problems. Or their dim
professional outlook could cloud their understanding of how much sense an orientation offer can
make.
Regarding social assistance the understanding of the problem seems to have shifted. By following a
social investment strategy and to avoid unemployment, government seems to have an interest in
young people taken them up on counselling offers and being guided into a professional career. The
usage of these offers is made correspondingly easy. The problems with accepting the offers are now
mainly on the Behavioural Layer, which might feed a misuse discussion along the lines of “Such a nice
offer, but they don’t take the opportunity!“ Young people have – similar to social assistance –
understandable reasons to not use the offered opportunities. There is some sort of self-exclusion.
But this setup might change in the near future, since the voluntary offer is changed to compulsory
counselling.
5.) The Future of the Youth Coaching – An Compulsory Service
During the coalition negotiations for building a new government in Austria in 2013 the parties
decided that Youth Coaching will become part of the new compulsory (vocational) training
(“Ausbildungspflicht” / “duty of training”) which makes education/training mandatory for all young
people under 19, beginning with 2016. Only two years after the service was established throughout
Austria the voluntary service will be transformed into a compulsory service for young people, who
are not very clear about their profession/vocational career paths. Finally clients are transformed in
“subordinated citizens”. And there are high expectations concerning the results: Bacher et al. (2013,
p. 446) calculates that an extension of compulsory schooling (a system which is slightly different from
compulsory vocational training) to the age of 18 would – ceteris paribus – lower the NEET rate from
7.6% to 5.4%; an extension to the age of 19 would lower the rate to 4.6%. However, these future
changes will transform the characteristic of Youth Coaching again: Mayrhofer (2012) who extensively
worked on the meaning of the term “low-threshold”, points out that there is a contradiction
between a low-threshold approach and a compulsory service. There is a good chance that the quality
of the offers might suffer by transforming it into a compulsory exercise: A compulsory offer will find
certain users even if it is not very attractive; additionally a higher case load could lead to a reduction
of the quality of the service.
Viewed comprehensively, this transformation into a compulsory system fits very well into the general
activation strategy of the paternalistic “conservative” welfare state: The “supporting” welfare system
fragments society according to their standing and status (class) into different groups who have
different kinds of duties and rights. There is more pressure on the lower classes, which nevertheless
do not have the same opportunities to achieve good positions in society. Furthermore the system
forces young people into the labour market (commodification). Unsurprisingly, hard-to-reach young
people are often labelled as “outside the system” (“systemfern”). This really does not define them as
being “outside of the societal system”, but just as being “out of reach" of systems like school, training
and labour.

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