KEY POINTS:
Mayors have abandoned a target of eliminating youth unemployment by this year, giving themselves a two-year extension.
Nelson Mayor Paul Matheson, chairman of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs that set the target with the Government five years ago, said the mayors, Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope and the Ministry of Social Development had all accepted they would "not quite" reach the target this year.
"We have gone out a couple of years and said maybe we should take that catchment a bit wider," he said.
"We had a good talk with the minister and the ministry and said we were all a bit ambitious when we said 2007. So we'll keep going - we are talking 2009 at the moment. We will try and confirm those things in the next few months."
But Mr Benson-Pope stuck to the 2007 target and denied the mayors had discussed a two-year extension with him or his officials.
"My goal is very much to deliver on that commitment by the end of this year and I'm very focused on it," he said.
On Friday he launched a new youth transition service aimed at helping school-leavers to get jobs or further training in the Auckland suburbs of Mt Roskill, Three Kings, Wesley, Mt Albert and Avondale.
Youthline has been contracted to run the service. It will be expected to follow up more than 1000 school-leavers from the area's 11 high schools and give "customised support" to 300 of them every year.
Ten similar services already operate in the Far North, Whangarei, Waitakere, Manukau, Hamilton, Rotorua, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Porirua and the Hutt Valley.
A new service is also being launched today in Palmerston North, with rural Waikato and Hawkes Bay due to follow this year.
But large chunks of the country, including the South Island and the rest of Auckland City outside the targeted suburbs, still do not have planned services.
Benefit figures released last week show that the number of 18- and 19-year-olds on the unemployment benefit plunged from 15,855 in December 1999 to just 1566 last month.
But those numbers do not include young people on sickness, domestic purposes or other benefits or teenagers under 18, who cannot get the dole unless they have a partner and children. Many, such as West Auckland's Jessie de Fontenay, who was until recently unemployed, are supported by their parents but have dropped out of school and work.
The household labour force survey shows that the total unemployed aged 15 to 19 actually rose from 23,900 in December 1999 to 26,100 last December. This represented only a slight drop in percentage terms from 15.9 per cent to 14.3 per cent of all those in the age group who were working or seeking work.
The original agreement between mayors and the Government stated that "by 2007, all 15- to 19-year-olds will be engaged in appropriate education, training, work or other options which will lead to long-term economic independence and wellbeing".
Mr Benson-Pope said he still hoped to meet the target by "reprioritising" funds that have been freed up by falling unemployment into further youth transition programmes.
Mr Matheson said most mayors and councils had put resources into helping young people into work or training.
Many had started council cadetships for unemployed youngsters and some had schemes, such as Actionworks in Christchurch, which helped school-leavers although they had not been incorporated into the Government's formal youth transition services.
"Unemployment has dropped so dramatically that it has probably been a bit faster than we all thought," Mr Matheson said.
"In any campaign date you have like that, you are always going to have some sort of residue at the end.
"What I was saying was that 2007 was the date and we'll all try to achieve that but, if there is something left over, we'll all get out the sponge and try and get rid of it. You may need another year or two to do that."
Course puts end to two aimless years
After a year of babysitting and reading books, 18-year-old West Aucklander Jessie de Fontenay is finally on track to a career.
Ms de Fontenay, a former Waitakere College student, was one of the first school-leavers referred to the Waitakere youth transition service when it was set up in Henderson two years ago.
"I really didn't like school," she said yesterday. "It was all right but the things I was good at were horticulture and my hospitality class."
The college referred her to the transition service, which helped her prepare a CV and sort out that she really wanted to work in hospitality. But it was up to her to find a job.
"I was trying to look for a job, but no one would have me because I didn't have job experience," she said.
She was living with her parents two minutes' walk from the sea at Bethells Beach. "It's pretty good in summer but there's not much to do in the winter," she said. "I didn't have a car so it was kind of hard."
She ended up looking after her 2-year-old sister "quite a bit" and "reading books".
But the youth transition service kept in touch and, in January this year she moved in with her boyfriend in Glendene and started a six-month hospitality course.
