Interview: Matthew Gordon, chief executive of Spectra

Launched in October 2018, the Care Leaver Covenant is a promise made by private, public or voluntary organisations to provide support for care leavers aged 16-25 to help them to live independently. These organisations – they range from councils, charities, large multinationals, NHS, hotel chains, specialist trainers – make offers of help ranging from training and apprenticeships, job opportunities or mentoring and pastoral support. In early 2018, Midlands-based social value agency Spectra First was contracted by the Department for Education to run the covenant. Spectra’s founder and managing director Matthew Gordon said it was his work a few years earlier to establish a supported accommodation service for care leavers that highlighted to him the need for the covenant. “I was disappointed with the quality of supported accommodation provision I found,” says Gordon, whose background is in learning and development. Spectra set about creating a new type of support package for care leavers which meant that when the covenant was launched “we were already doing a lot of it”.