Social enterprises and NEETs: ethical and effective entrepreneurial skills programmes?

Abstract

If young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) participate in Entrepreneurial Skills Programmes (ESPs), delivered by social enterprises, there is an ethical responsibility to measure the outcomes of these programmes. So called "hard‟ outcomes, such as new businesses created or jobs secured, are self evident but potential "soft‟ outcomes, such as attitude to enterprise or general self-efficacy, are less evident. This exploratory study aimed to develop evaluation techniques for the assessment of "soft‟ outcomes on participants after completing a six-week ESP delivered by a work-integration social enterprise (WISE