1.3 National youth strategy
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Existence of a National Youth Strategy
Currently, there is no overall youth strategy in Denmark. As with the legislation, strategies are sector divided. Therefore, the different ministries dealing with youth issues feed in proposals and sector strategies within their fields.
Scope and contents
Within the field of social service, the Government in 2006 announced a strategy to combat negative social inheritance (Lige muligheder for alle børn og unge: Regeringens strategi til at bekæmpe negativ social arv). The strategy outlined fields, where new measures should be introduced, or existing measures be strengthened. Although most measures were directed at children and their parents, specific initiatives directed at youth were introduced. They covered continued focus on school achievements, and the integration of dual-language youth, which meant children from immigrant families, and crime prevention with different means. The strategy is followed by the Government’s strategy paper from 2007, Equal opportunities: strengthened personal resources and social cohesion (Lige muligheder: styrkede personlige ressourcer og social sammenhængskraft). Concerning youth, the strategy puts focus on prevention of young people’s drop-out of education and strengthening initiatives to support vulnerable young people.
The Government strategy Equal opportunities was evaluated by SFI - Danish National Centre for Social Research, now VIVE (SFI – Det Nationale Velfærdscenter for Velfærd) in 2016.
Within the field of education, a long-term strategy has been first the Lisbon Strategy, then the Europe 2020 strategy. However recently modifications have been made in the goals set for the share of youth that should obtain an academic upper secondary education. The share should be reduced to allow a larger share of young people to obtain vocational education. The strategy change is a consequence of labour market forecasts that show huge shortage in skilled workers in the future.
To increase the attraction of vocational education, new educations have been developed that more easily allow the bridgebuilding between vocational education and higher education.
The overall goal that almost all young people should have an education has not been omitted. It has although been clear that it is no easy task to fulfil the goal. Drop-out from educations is a crucial problem. So, a second main strategy in the youth policy is to strengthen the instruments that monitor and follow young people whose educational trajectory is vulnerable.
The government has introduced new legislation that put the responsibility on the municipalities to secure that all young people receive guidance about education and job. It is the obligation to maintain this guidance activity until the young person is 25 years old, and until the 30th year monitor and register those young people who are still not in education or job. Several educational offers are available for young people who have difficulties in the ordinary educations or have special needs.
On the municipal level, all municipalities are required to formulate a youth policy. In this respect, the policy concept is quite instrumental.
A recent government strategy is directed at young people with an immigrationt background. The strategy aims at combating so-called parallelled societies, societies where mainly ethnic minorities live in relative isolation from the majority society. The strategy is named One Denmark without parallelled societies – No ghettos in 2030 (Ét Danmark uden parallelsamfund – Ingen ghettoer i 2030). Concerning youth, the strategy introduces measures that prevent a concentration of young people with so-called foreign background in specific upper secondary schools, and it criminalises re-education journeys to the country of origin for young people with an immigrant background.
Responsible authority for the implementation of the Youth Strategy
The responsible authorities for implementation of the strategy to combat negative social inheritance were both ministries and municipalities. The strategy was cross-sectional and therefore involved both ministries of the social, the education, and the justice.
Responsible for the strategy of extensive and extended youth guidance are the municipalities.
The responsible authority for the implementation of the strategy of increasing the share of young people who choose a vocational education is the Minister for Youth and Education.
Revisions/updates
There is no overall youth strategy to be revised or updated.