Impact Bond: Links for Life
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. Five specially trained 'Link Workers' offer individual, continuous and holistic 1-to-1 support for young people in areas such as drug mental health, family intervention, housing/homelessness, youth offending, educational welfare, and drugs/alcohol misuse. Support is provided in school (e.g. sitting with young people in classes) as well as outside (e.g. home visits), alongside a range of complementary vocational training courses. 
Start of service provision: 2012-04
Total investment commitment currency: GBP
Total investment commitment: 370000
Total investment commitment (USD): 584474.7807
Maximum potential outcome payment: 1300000 GBP
Maximum potential outcome payment (USD): 2053560.04
Target population: 14 - 19 year olds, including the most vulnerable young people and those falling through gaps in mainstream provision
Actual number of service users or beneficiaries engaged: 600
Actual unit type: Individual
Notes: Referral Route: Referrals from schools, local NEET forum, Leaving Care Team, Mental Health Teams and youth providers. Also self-referrals. 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).