‘Work is good for you’: how UK scheme could help tackle youth mental health crisis

Paid employment can boost confidence and wellbeing, says Pat McFadden as jobs guarantee scheme gets under way

Work must be “part of the answer” to the mental health crisis among young people, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has said as he met some of the first beneficiaries of Labour’s youth jobs guarantee scheme.

He was speaking on a visit to Boots’s headquarters in Nottingham on Wednesday, where several 18- to 21-year-olds were taken on under the job guarantee – with their wages paid by the taxpayer for six months.