Coordinator of Youth Guidance Centres (One-Stop-Shops)
Managing multi-competent teams – a new profession with a tailor-made education

Young adults not in education or training and without a job is a vulnerable group in our societies. This group is often referred to as NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training). A diverse group, difficult to find, difficult to motivate to take the first step to ask for help and when they are in contact with welfare services the needed measures are complex.

According to Eurostat in 2020 the proportion of young NEETs between the ages of 20 and 34 was 17,6 per cent on average in the EU as a whole, with a variation between 7,2 and 13 per cent in the countries of the Baltic Sea region.

Therefore so-called “Youth Guidance Centres”, providing multiple welfare services gathered under one roof have proved to be a successful model when organizing an effective answer to this societal and individual challenge. This low-threshold service provision has become increasingly common, particularly in the Baltic Sea Region with for example “Ohjaamo” in Finland, “Navigatorcentrum” in Sweden, “Ungevejen” in Denmark and “Jugendberufsagentur” in Germany.

The key function in these centres are the coordinator charged with responsibility to manage the centre including staff representing different organizational and professional cultures, often with varying mandates and missions. This is a demanding role that needs to be strengthened, as integrated services become a necessary response to complex and increasingly fragmented welfare systems.

In the framework of the flagship School to Work (S2W) with its NEETs platform it has been decided to define this new profession as coordinator and develop and test an education on Baltic Sea Region basis. This is done in an Erasmus+ – strategic partnership project. The partnership represents both practitioners and educational providers from Denmark, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden.

The education consists of four modules. The first one starts on September 10. 

Please read more on the S2W website.