campusreview . com . au industry & research terms of their education and training and employment pathways , but also in terms of their current states of health and wellbeing , their levels of anxiety or uncertainty or distress about what they imagine their futures to be in this context of profound uncertainty .
Are you optimistic of a vaccine being available soon , and do you think that would immediately improve young people ' s lives ? Commenting on a vaccine is outside my area of expertise . But lots of other people who have expertise in that field are saying there are some good signs about the possibility of a vaccine being developed . But you have people like Alan Joyce from Qantas saying that there ' ll be no international travel , for instance , for Qantas until the middle of next year , at least .
So the short and medium term is still really profoundly uncertain and so is what the new normal will look like in terms of the economy , in terms of those industry sectors where young people tend to be employed , particularly while they ' re still at school or university and they ' re looking for part-time work . And again , when they leave school or university and are looking for full-time work , we know young people have had a pretty grim employment outlook for quite a while .
One of the things that we ' re interested in talking about in this context is those populations of young people who are already vulnerable , who are already in danger or at risk of being disengaged , of not been engaged in education or further education , in the labour market or are on the edges of education and training and are barely getting by .
There ' ll be some parts of the youth population who will be resilient , will bounce back , will have the support networks and the resources and family connections that will help them in that recovery but there are significant numbers of young people who were disengaged , have become disengaged , don ' t have really cool internet resources to make the online learning experience as good as being face to face .
Coupled with that is just that anxiety and uncertainty about what the future looks like . The project we ' re doing at the moment in Melbourne is with a network that works with young people in that context , the Inner North Local Learning and Employment Network . One of the things we ' re finding is that the mental health services for young people in that particular area are dealing with double the caseload they were dealing with prior to COVID . So those mental health issues that range from uncertainty , anxiety , feeling isolated , not having connections to people in the ways that they might have pre-COVID .
There are particular populations of young people who are at risk in these circumstances and that ' s one of the things we ' re interested in . There will always be young people who are resilient and will bounce back , but there ' s significant numbers of young people who have particular difficulty in accessing employment opportunities and services anyway .
I think what the pandemic has revealed are those existing fault lines in our society , those existing inequalities , and they ' ve amplified them . They ' ve turned those things up to 10 or 11 on the scale . So in that context , our project is trying to imagine the world in 2025 so that we can imagine the worst case scenario through to the best case scenario and then plan the services , partnerships , collaborations , opportunities in a particular part of Melbourne .
We are looking at a place-based response to this pandemic . There ' s global dimensions , there ' s national dimensions , there ' s state-based dimensions . But young people live in places , that ' s where their opportunities are . So one of the things that we ' re looking at is trying to imagine how organisations , schools , businesses in localities can respond to the needs of young people in those localities . Because in different places , there will be different needs . There ' ll be different opportunities . There ' ll be different challenges .
Is there any data that points to young people ' s mental health condition right now , either in Melbourne or across Australia ? There ' s a number of national bodies and state-based bodies that provide services for young people who are reporting significant increases in demand . Often there ' s a sense that it has to be a mental illness over a long period of time for it to be a concern , particularly if we ' re talking about pathways into education and training and employment . And what we ' re trying to think about and work through and do research on here is the ways in which a general sense of health and wellbeing underpins all of that so that you , as a young person , feel more engaged , feel more motivated , feel more positive , more hopeful if you had that general state of health and wellbeing that enables you to do that .
One of the things that we ' re finding and are concerned about is that the focus of government at many levels at this point in time just seems to be on skills . All the talk about the new normal and recovery is about skills and young people need skills to get jobs , as if young people don ' t have skills , as if there are jobs waiting for them , if only they had the skills .
And what seems to be missing is that sense of wellbeing that underpins all of that and the challenges that the pandemic and the crisis are posing to young people ' s general sense of wellbeing . And for some young people that will be a significant impact . And I think we need to be able to include that in the conversation as we go forward in a significant way : that we in some respects have to recognise that this is both a health crisis and an economic crisis , and maybe a crisis for employment and education . But it ' s also for a lot of people an existential crisis . What does life look like after a crisis like this ?
Everybody ' s pinning their hopes on the vaccine so that we can get back to normal . But until that happens , until we know what it looks like , there ' s this sense that maybe we ' re just going to be on a roller coaster of opening up , closing down , opening up , closing down , and what that means for living a life in that new normal is really troubling for lots of people , young and old . But I think particularly for young people who , at year 10 , 11 , 12 , and beyond are mapping out the next part of what their life is .
That ' s , if you like , the story of education . You get to year 10 , 11 , and 12 and you set yourself up for the next stage of your life . That story ' s been , I think , profoundly troubled , unsettled at the moment . And it ' s possibly a story that is open-ended . And in some respects , it used to be that you could be what you want to be . That was a part of that story . You work hard , you study hard , you can do whatever you want to do . And that story , I think , has been profoundly troubled at this point in time .
Those things that mark an adult life , independence , autonomy , relationships , family , household . And they were in flux prior to the pandemic for lots of young people . Now again , there ' s upside for some young people in those things , but those securities and uncertainties were already there and they ' ve been amplified in the context of the crisis . ■
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