Introduction

The Youth Guarantee programme in Finland is designed to prevent the social exclusion of young people by promoting access to education and employment after basic education. The main objective is to ensure that all young people aged under 25 (and recent graduates aged between 25 to 29) will be offered employment, continued education, a traineeship, an apprenticeship, a place in a workshop or a place in rehabilitation within three months of leaving school or of unemployment. By preventing the social exclusion of young people, the overall aim is to increase their welfare and involvement in society, as well as ensuring that Finland will have a qualified workforce in the future (Työ- ja elinkeinoministeriö, 2013).

One-Stop Guidance Centres (OSGCs) (‘Ohjaamo’ in Finnish) are an implementation tool of the Youth Guarantee. They provide lowthreshold support for young people (below the age of 30), offering personal and electronic services relevant to their individual life path. The operating model of OSGCs is based on the cooperation of several public sector service providers offering information, advisory and guidance services to young people. It is a joint venture between the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, the Ministry of Education and Culture, and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. The services of the Employment and Economic Development Office are available at all centres. In addition, wider collaborative networks include third sector organisations, voluntary organisations and other bodies that work with young people. The OSGC model creates a new form of public–private–people partnership, with young people actively shaping their own future.

This chapter addresses the interaction between the Youth Guarantee and the Finnish OSGCs, referring to the contexts of regulatory tools, institutional arrangements and governmental decision processes. It reports research undertaken with service providers and young people involved with the OSGC in Turku, a city of 184,000 inhabitants on the south-west coast of Finland.

The Youth Guarantee and OSGCs as an innovative implementation tool in Finland

The social problem that is the focus of the Youth Guarantee programme is youth unemployment, which has been consistently higher than that of the adult population over decades (Reilly, 2013). One factor is that young people often lack the skills to easily find a job.