Kansarme jongeren buiten de boot?

In the Netherlands youth unemployment is an important issue on the political agenda. Projects have been set up to lead unemployed, often deprived young people back to school or work. However, not all of these youths want to participate in the projects and some leave early. Is this is a problem? Are these young people capable of finding employment by themselves or do their problems increase without the support of these projects? To answer these questions we studied deprived unemployed youths who belonged to the target group of an unemployment project (Route 23). The results of the research show that most of the former dropouts can look after themselves well. Many are working or are back at school, and they have fewer problems than they had before. Participants who left the project early are slightly less well off than the others. We advise monitoring all persons in the target group who fail to enter the project or leave early, and give them the opportunity to re-enter the project or ask for support. This is how the project can provide an additional safety net for these groups.