Impact Bond: New Horizons (Career Connect)
Stage of development: Complete
Policy sector: Employment and training
Intervention: The IF pilot projects aim to prevent young people from becoming NEET, or support those already NEET to re-engage with education, training and employment. Interventions display a wide diversity in terms of participant age range, in and out of school provision and the balance between one to one and group work. Some programmes are built around participation on a structured programme or course. Despite these differences, there are also commonalities between projects including: time spent on initial marketing, recruitment and engagement; an intense initial process of working with each participant to achieve a positive shift in ‘mind-set’; a more extended period of personal and skills development and the encouragement of mental resilience in dealing with challenges and difficulties faced; and an ongoing process of goal setting and progression facilitation. The intervention was delivered through a range of Resilience Coaching Programmes, which includes the use of an online ‘Mental Toughness’ diagnostic tool. Once assessed, the young people received one-on-one resilience coaching focusing on the particular challenges faced by each young person (as identified through the Mental Toughness assessment).
Start of service provision: 2012-04
Total investment commitment currency: GBP
Total investment commitment: 1500000
Total investment commitment (USD): 2369492.354
Total outcome payments made: 4504011 GBP
Total outcome payments made (USD): 7114813.085
Target population: Eligible ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET) clients from Connexions Customer Information Service (CCIS) database (14 - 24 years of age). Young people with learning difficulties, care leavers, young offenders.
Actual number of service users or beneficiaries engaged: 4222
Actual unit type: Individual
Notes: Referral Route: Referrals from Youth Offending Team, Leaving Care Teams and Registered Social Landlords. Additional assessments: Qualitative assessments of early implementation (2014) and delivery in the final year of operation (2016) were carried out to identify, for project partners, the key issues that the pilot projects have encountered in their first years, as well as assess how effectively the pilots have operated after three years of delivery. Furthermore, impact evaluation was carried out using survey and administrative participant data against a matched sample of non-participants to determine the Social Return on Investment (2018).