Young adults without family safety net face deepening financial crisis

Eleanor Bell has a first-class degree from the University of Central Lancashire, but two years after graduating she remains unemployed and living in her boyfriend's home outside Penistone in South Yorkshire. She was taken into care at age ten. The rural location and her lack of a driving licence have made the job search harder, and she has applied for positions she can count only by losing track. What troubles her most is not just the financial strain but the absence of something harder to quantify: the casual guidance that comes from having parents who have walked the same path. "I want to be independent and so when you get to this kind of thing it's like hitting a wall," she says.

Eleanor's situation is not unusual, though it is more precarious than most. Official figures show that 39% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 in England are not in education, employment or training, compared with around 13% of young people overall. When she encountered a BBC article about how more than 40% of 25-year-olds now live with their parents, she recognized something in the gap between their experience and hers. Those young people have a financial backstop. She does not. "It's like everyone in their 20s is having to tread water, but I haven't been given a buoyancy aid," she tells the BBC.

In Sunderland, Sam Barrett, 24, left her full-time job in hospitality to care for her mother and is now studying health and social care part-time. The Carer's Allowance and Universal Credit she receives do not cover her main expenses. Her mother helps when she can, but there is not much to spare. "I don't buy any luxuries, I rarely do anything fun," Sam says. She watches others her age receive money for driving lessons, for cars, for the small investments that compound into advantage. She has none of that. What angers her most is the arithmetic of it: she is saving the government money by caring for her mother, yet the government offers her no meaningful support. "They're basically saying just get into debt," she says.

Ezgi Polat, 23, from Ramsey in Cambridgeshire, lost her job a year ago. Her parents were struggling financially themselves, so there was no family safety net to catch her. She fell behind on rent and bills almost immediately. When her local bus service was cancelled, getting to the job centre became difficult enough that her benefits were cut. She was receiving £360 a month in Universal Credit. Her rent alone was £460. Add utility bills, council tax, and living costs, and her total debt spiralled to about £4,000. After Citizens Advice intervened, the council wiped out her rent arrears three months ago, and she negotiated repayment plans of £200 a month each with her electricity and water companies. She has now found work in a warehouse. But the road was not easy, and she knows she is not alone in the desperation. "A lot of older people feel like we're not ambitious enough, or we're not striving hard enough, but they'd be surprised at the amount of people out there so desperate for work and so desperate for support but with nowhere to turn to," she says.

A recent Citizens Advice survey of more than 5,500 people found that 36% of adults are behind on at least one bill. For those in their 20s, that figure climbs to 57%. The divide is widening, according to Luke Young, head of policy at Citizens Advice. "For young people right now the divide is growing bigger between those who do have financial support from families and other networks, and then those who don't. Young people who don't have that wider support network are being let down." Just under a million young people are currently not in employment, education or training, according to the latest government figures.

The government has announced £2.5 billion in investment to create opportunities through apprenticeships, job grants, and training. It has also introduced a Renters' Rights Act to give tenants more protection from excessive rent increases. But these measures may not reach the young people most in need. Eleanor, Sam, and Ezgi are not struggling because they lack ambition or because they have not heard about apprenticeships. They are struggling because they lack the financial cushion that allows their peers to take unpaid internships, to move to where the jobs are, to weather a month without income, to learn from someone who has been there before. The question that Eleanor posed when she first got in touch with the BBC remains unanswered: where are the people like her, and who do they have to fall back on?