Towards a basic package of support for youth in South Africa

South Africa is a policy rich environment, with many excellent policies that accurately identify the challenges facing young people as they transition through school and towards work. However, young people still face significant challenges in this transition period. This paper reports on a policy review undertaken as part of the Basic Package of Support for Youth in South Africa project, which involved an assessment of existing policies and several consultations with various departments about how they support NEET youth. The policy assessment focuses on policies that pertain to the multidimensional needs of young people, including education, training, health, wellbeing, and employment. It does so in order to identify key policies and programmes that set out mandates to support young people who are not in employment, education and training. It provides the overarching policy context, identifies which departments have mandates to serve youth and what programmes exist, and reports which departments report a willingness to participate in developing a basic package of support for youth. The key finding is that there are a number of programmes that exist, but that young people continue to fall through the cracks because of a lack of policy coordination and integration. Based on this, the paper proposes an institutional framework to support a basic package of support for youth in South Africa.