Addressing Loneliness Among NEET Young People – Insights from Youth Work Practice and Academia.

Date of recording: 24th September 2025
NEET Webinar Slides by Dr. Liam Wrigley and Sally Carr MBE presentation

In this webinar Dr Liam Wrigley (Assistant Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, University of Birmingham) explored the relationship between young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) and their experiences of loneliness, presenting key insights from ongoing work with young people in youth work settings and youth work practitioners.

This session explored how being NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) intersects with experiences of loneliness, which is often overlooked factor in understanding and addressing young people’s disengagement from education and employment (Carr, 2022; Wrigley, 2024; Wrigley and Weston, 2026).

The session was joined by Sally Carr MBE, who is a prominent youth work practitioner, with over 30 years’ experience of in youth work, education, health, community development, and social justice. Sally’s career has focused particularly within the LGBTQ+ community and GRT communities within Greater Manchester.

References:
Carr, S. (2022). Support for GRT young people. Children and Young People Now, 2022(11), 15-15.

Wrigley, L. (2024). “With the pandemic everything changes!”: examining welfare reform and conditionality prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic amongst NEET experienced young people. Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 7(1), 9-25.

Wrigley, L., & Weston, S. (2026). Understanding the significance of NEET: typologies, definitions and global challenges. In SAGE Handbook of Global Youth Studies. SAGE Publishing.