ABSTRACT
The prospect of mass youth unemployment is widely regarded not only as a symptom of economic decline; it is also seen as a threat of moral decline. The most extreme effects of unemployment are predicted to be the drift of young people into crime, violence and political extremism. Demoralisation is proposed as a result of youth unemployment, and this chapter is concerned with those interventions aimed at instilling into the young people those ‘social skills to lift themselves out of their situation’. The Social and Life Skills’ (SLS) course is designed to encourage the development of such competencies in the unemployed youngster. The general objective of SLS training is the inculcation of a large number of diverse and vaguely defined skills to unemployed adolescents, in order to improve not only their chances of finding a job, but also their ability to hold down a job when they find one.
