Connected Futures Fund

In November, the Foundation launched a £6.1m fund to support young people to get good jobs through local partnerships made up of councils, charities and employers in England’s most deprived areas.

Why is it needed?

Young people with multiple disadvantages and lower qualifications are much more likely to become long-term unemployed. The pandemic has highlighted and deepened disparities, with the most vulnerable young people facing the greatest barriers to good jobs.

What are the aims?

The foundation says the funding will be flexible to “foster collaboration and encourage innovation and risk-taking while acting as a catalyst for wider change”. In each phase, partnerships will be required to put resources into co-production, with young people taking a lead role, and appropriate involvement of practitioners and minority-led organisations at every stage.

How will funding be allocated?

Money will be allocated in two phases. Phase one will allocate grants of up to £125,000 to six to eight partnerships over 18 months. Phase two, from January 2024, will provide larger grants of up to £1.5m to deliver solutions in up to four partnership areas.

What are the phase one aims?

Collaboratives that receive phase one funding should deliver:

• A clear and widely shared analysis of what’s going wrong and why

• A clear and widely shared vision of change and what good would look like

• Active involvement from young people facing disadvantage in shaping the vision

• Stronger partnerships and relationships across sectors, people and organisations

• A collective roadmap for change, including delivery plans and resource requirements.

What will be funded?

• Salaries and staff costs, including existing staff

• Costs of young people’s and/or volunteers’ time and participation

• Ethnographic, youth-led or participatory research to understand young people’s experiences

• Mapping systems, resource flows, young people’s journeys or other processes to understand how services and agencies interact

• Exploring evidence or experiences from other places

• Data/cost-benefit analysis or evaluation to make the case for new approaches

• Co-design or prototyping to try out new ways of working at small scale

• Help to gather data and evidence to support the case for scaling up the project.

What is covered in phase two?

The second phase of the programme will see the foundation fund two to four collectives to turn their plans into reality. “We expect some places will launch new interventions or services that can fill gaps or failures in current provision,” the foundation’s fund prospectus states. “Other places may focus on relationships, processes, incentives or decision-making.”

Other requirements

Partnerships should be between at least three organisations, representing at least two of the following organisations: Community-based (eg charity, social enterprise), local statutory body responsible for young people aged 16–25 (eg council, FE college, school, alternative education provider), collective employer body (eg Local Enterprise Partnership, Chamber of Commerce) or a large not-for-profit employer (250+ employees in the local area).

A list of 73 areas has been compiled based on a higher-than-average concentration of young people facing disadvantage and higher-than-average proportion of young people not in employment, education or training. The foundation has also drawn up a list of groups of disadvantaged young people the fund will prioritise.

How to apply and timescales

One partner organisation should be accountable for the grant and they should distribute funding to the other partners and procure services or activities as required. The accountable partner must have a minimum turnover of £100,000 per annum and been in operation for a minimum of three years.

The deadline for applications is 17 January 2022, with a final decision made in late April 2022. Phase one will launch in June 2022.

• More from: www.youthfuturesfoundation.org
  
  

Funding roundup

• Teachers are being urged to apply for a share of up to £150,000 to develop projects that help disadvantaged children to succeed at school. Education charity SHINE has launched its annual funding competition Let Teachers SHINE, which offers grants of up to £25,000 over two years for innovative ideas to help disadvantaged children in the North of England to succeed in English, maths or science. Deadline for entries is 18 January 2022.

• A total of 11 youth and community projects led by young people in Stockport have received £27,927 in Special Projects funding from R Time. The funding supports young people to make decisions and take action to improve their communities and the people who live in them, resulting in reduced antisocial behaviour.

• Catch22, The Prince’s Trust and Apprentice Nation have joined forces to deliver the Creating Opportunities Programme, funded by the Home Office and HM Treasury. The programme will see the organisations help up to 1,500 young people aged 16 to 25 to develop the skills they need to make a successful transition into work, training and apprenticeships. It is targeted at young people at risk of serious violence.

• The government has made an extra £126m available to schools through its Get Help with Technology programme, which provides computers to disadvantaged pupils, including care leavers and child refugees. The Department for Education said the investment would pay for around 10,000 new devices for children with a social worker and those leaving care and help to up to half a million disadvantaged children.