A woman whose first job left her questioning if she was “too stupid to work” is now helping other young people who have struggled since leaving school.
Georgia Sweeney was diagnosed with dyslexia while still at school. At the age of 17, she started attending college, but the condition made her studies a challenge, and she eventually dropped out after it began affecting her mental health.
Later, she secured a six-month apprenticeship at an insolvency firm’s office. However, what started well soon changed a few months into the job.
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Feeling she lacked the training and experience of the person who last held her role, it all came to a head when, just 30 minutes from the end of her shift, Georgia was pulled into the main office. She recalls an upsetting meeting in which her employers raised an incident that happened while she was taking a call that afternoon.
Georgia said one manager told her she could potentially cost the business “millions of pounds” if her mistake hadn’t been spotted. She was given an ultimatum – work her two-week notice or quit. Tearfully, she grabbed the things and walked out of the office for the last time.
Georgia, who lives in Collyhurst, said: “I quite enjoyed it in the beginning. Then I found out that the person I was replacing was someone much older than me – I think they were 27.
“They were also doing an apprenticeship, but theirs was through university, and they were getting, I believe, a degree or some qualification in accounting.
“The workplace very much expected me to work at the same level as the person that I had been replacing, which isn’t feasible.
“I found it extremely difficult. There were many tasks that I didn’t understand, things that they expected me to know. The training was quite brief, and I was really struggling with it because I felt like I was being a burden by asking questions.
“They were also not very flexible with the fact that I’m a carer. I was a carer at that time, I’m still a carer now, and there wasn’t really any flexibility with that.
“I ended up leaving because it just made my mental health so bad. By the end I was pretty much like turning up crying in the car park outside coming into work.”
‘Am I too stupid to work?’
After she left the job, Georgia said her confidence crashed to an all-time low.
“I had lasted for about six months there,” she said. “Which is probably longer than I should have done. I felt it was quite damaging.
“I had no confidence in myself, thinking, how could I ever work a job when I had done so badly at my first one? Is this what everything’s supposed to be like?
“Honestly, it was like, am I too stupid to work? That’s the thought that I had for quite a while.”
After leaving her job, Georgia said she was in a “bad place” and ended up taking time off from education or employment while she struggled with her mental health.
While some may say Georgia was unlucky in her first work experience, the statistics show that many young people are finding themselves in career limbo. They’re not employed, in apprenticeships, or in education.
Research by Health Equals, an organisation that campaigns for health opportunities and highlights health inequalities across the UK, has revealed that young people growing up in the UK’s lowest‑income households are over three times more likely to be out of work, education or training than those from the wealthiest homes.
Often known as NEET: Not in Education, Employment or Training, the research also found that the number of NEET young people with a mental health condition has doubled over the last 15 years.
Of those 16-24 year olds who were NEET, 30% had a likely mental health condition in 2009-10, increasing to 60% in 2023-24.
As Georgia struggled with her confidence and mental health, her doctor put her in touch with the Manchester charity 42nd Street.
42nd Street is a young people’s mental health charity that provides free and confidential services to young people who are experiencing difficulties with their mental health and emotional wellbeing.
It was there that Georgia recommended Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). “I just wasn’t leaving the house, and I didn’t want to get up… I didn’t want to do anything,” said Georgia.
CBT helped her get on top of her social anxiety to the point she was able to use public transport and have the confidence to speak to people again.
“After being shouted at and things in the office I was really anxious to talk to anyone because I was like, well this person might start shouting at me again,” Georgia added.
“CBT really helped that. I was also recommended to go to night classes because I wanted to do more. As much as I wanted to go out and get a job, there was this big barrier because I’d done it before and it had all gone horribly wrong.
“So I went to night classes because there were less people. I could focus on the single subject that I wanted to do instead of having to do four or five subjects.
“It also gave me time to fix my mental health.”
Georgia said when her course of therapy at 42nd Street was coming to an end, she didn’t feel ready to leave, and so she started taking part in the organisation’s support groups.
This helped her rebuild her confidence and eventually return to education, where she trained as a youth worker. Now 26, Georgia runs women’s and youth groups and works as a Peer Consultant on an employment program, helping young people access meaningful work and understand their options.
‘They say it’s not worth their while to get a job’
Georgia now says she wants to help people in a way she didn’t get when she needed help.
Reflecting on her troubled first experience of work, she says: “I definitely think I got bad luck in replacing someone who was older than me. It was a job role that I just wasn’t fit for, and I suppose I didn’t know it at the time.
“But I definitely see young people and my peers coming to talk to me about not feeling ready to be in work.
“I think sometimes workplaces want people who already know what they’re doing. There’s a lack of wanting to train people. I’ve had chats with people trying to get jobs, even retail jobs, and they tend to want you to have worked at a till before, regardless of your age.
“They want you to have some knowledge and not need as much training as the next person might need.”
One of the reasons Georgia cites for why young people are getting stuck and becoming classified as NEET is a lack of entry-level jobs, particularly ones that make it worthwhile for young people to work rather than stay on benefits.
“From the young people I’ve spoken to, and that I work with, generally they say it’s not worth their while to get a job. It’s the simple fact that having a job doesn’t pay to live anymore.
“You know that through benefits things get paid, like housing gets paid, and you might get a cut in council tax and things like that.
“When you’re getting a job, you have to accommodate for the fact that you now need to pay all the things that your benefits are currently paying for, but you also need to afford to be able to travel to your job, you may need to afford to get better internet if you work from home instead.
“You might need extra food to take lunches. There are all these extra expenses that you have to calculate when you’re getting a job.
“If you’re under 25, minimum wage is lower for you than it is for someone over 25. And I think there’s this idea that maybe [young] people are still living at home.
“But for those that aren’t living at home, they either need to work more hours or get a job that’s much higher than minimum wage. Which, for anyone, even people with degrees and experience, they’re hard jobs to find.”
Georgia also feels schools could play a bigger role in preparing young people for the world of work, rather than just academic tutoring. This would include mental health and general life skills, as well as greater financial education.
“I think we’re still very much stuck on the fact that you go to high school, you go to college, you go to university, you get a job,” said Georgia.
“I talk to young people, and they are so incredibly smart, but they may have missed a year of university for their mental health and feel that they’ve completely destroyed their life already. And you know, they’re 19, 20, and they’ve kind of gone, ‘Oh, that’s it, I didn’t do the path the right way the first way.’
“But there are other ways to do things and just because you’ve had that break or that stop for your mental health doesn’t mean that you’ve suddenly destroyed your path or the way into work.”
Dr Luke Munford, a Health Economist at the University of Manchester who carried out the analysis for Health Equals, said: “Our analysis shows a worrying reversal in progress. After years of decline, the proportion of young people who are NEET has risen again. Even more striking is the sharp increase in mental ill‑health among NEET young people: double the rate seen among Millennials.
“The evidence is clear: government must offer a package of support to meet mental health needs, expand high‑quality training and apprenticeships, and target resources to regions and groups facing the greatest disadvantage. Without decisive action, we risk embedding inequalities that will shape outcomes for decades to come.”
Health Equals is calling for the government to invest in community-based support to get people back into employment, and work with employers and education providers to prioritise prevention to stop people from becoming NEET in the first place.
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