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Youth centres can provide a successful setting for supporting young people in making decisions about many aspects of their health and well-being, according to an evaluation conducted by IES health and well-being researchers. The evaluation looked at a pilot project that promoted health and well-being in four youth centres, resulting in an improvement in young people’s access to advice and information on a range of topics.

Pay for apprentices in the first year of their apprenticeship, or generally for apprentices under the age of 19, had been exempt from the UK’s National Minimum Wage (NMW) regulation when this was first introduced in 1999. This exemption remained in place when a NMW was introduced for 16-17 year olds in 2004. While some recommendations for minimum weekly earnings levels for apprentices existed in England, a single hourly rate regulated within the NMW framework was only introduced on 1 October 2010.

New research for the International Labour Organization (ILO) has examined apprenticeship systems in 10 countries around the world, with a view to highlighting key trends and good practice to help India review its apprenticeship system. Although systems vary between countries, there are nevertheless many common features and trends.

The proven benefits of schemes which combine work and study and allow young people to acquire their first work experience have led to increased recent policy interest at both national and EU levels. As a result, apprenticeships and traineeships have become more prominent in the EU’s employment and youth policies, against the backdrop of increasing youth unemployment. IES has carried out a review of apprenticeship and traineeship schemes across the EU, which highlights the benefits of these schemes.

We last looked at the state of the UK labour market in this column just over two years ago. We noted then that there was little sign of a return to prerecession unemployment levels. Two years on, we can perhaps be forgiven a certain Groundhog Day feeling.

During 2012, IES carried out a study of the Family Nurse workforce on behalf of the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) National Unit. The brief was to explore workforce issues, especially recruitment, retention and job satisfaction, amongst Family Nurses (FNs) and their Supervisors. The study included an online survey, focus groups, telephone interviews and an analysis of workforce data from the FNP database, where possible making comparisons with nurses, midwives and health visitors working outside the FNP.

Local councils are right at the sharp end of public sector spending cuts and radically re-thinking what their communities need and how services can best be delivered for the public good. In this context, they need to reposition workforce planning within a correspondingly broader framework.

Improving occupational health and safety is an important goal for both employers and policymakers and something that has direct benefits for the workforce. One key way of achieving this is to involve employees in the development of good health and safety in their organisation.

Young people in Europe have been particularly hard hit by the recession of the past five years; they are finding it difficult to gain entry into the labour market on any terms and in countries such as Greece and Spain, youth unemployment rates are now heading towards 60%. One way of giving young people the experience they need to progress in the labour market is to provide access to traineeships.