Inspiring Futures final report

Summary

Youth Futures Foundation and BBC Children in Need funded Cordis Bright to independently evaluate the Inspiring Futures programme.

Evaluation approach

The evaluation focused on:

1. the implementation of Inspiring Futures and how it responded to the needs, challenges and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic
2. the differences made by Inspiring Futures;
3. learning for the future.

The evaluation was launched in December 2020 and final evaluation outputs were produced by March 2023.

It involved:

• consultation with grantees and children and young people they supported using Inspiring Futures grant funding
• consultation with programme stakeholders
• analysis of application, mid- and end-point data submitted by grantees
• sense-checking and improving findings and recommendations with young people, grantees, programme stakeholders and policy makers.

Youth Inclusion

The evaluation took a co-produced, mixed-methods approach, working collaboratively with young peer researchers and with programme stakeholders throughout. The peer researchers were formed from Youth Futures Youth Reference Group, who played an active role in all phases of the evaluation, along with the fund as a whole. Activities they supported ranged from facilitating focus groups through to analysis and co-developing outputs.

Insights

Inspiring Futures successfully provided emergency funding at pace and scale to 85 grantees across England in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It achieved its original aims of:

1. keeping the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations it funded financially stable during the pandemic,
2. supporting the organisations to continue to provide valued support to children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve their potential on their journey to employment.

It exceeded expectations in terms of the number of children and young people grantees reported reaching as a result of the funding.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated challenges for children and young people on their pathways towards employment, at all stages of the journeyInspiring Futures provided grantees with capacity to adapt their support to respond to these needs and to continue delivery in the changing context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The programme design emphasised:

• the flexible use of grants, devolving trust and decision-making to grantees where possible
• enabling access to funding for smaller VCS organisations where possible
• a broad conception of the pathways to employment, in the aim of ‘meeting children and young people where they are’ and enabling a wide reach.

The target cohort for Inspiring Futures was children and young people aged 10 to 24. This age range was chosen to span the target age range for Youth Futures Foundation (16-24 years old) and part of the target age range for BBC Children in Need (0-18 years old).

A large variety of project types were funded. Many of these fell outside of the typical Education, Employment and Training (EET) space and focused on achieving ‘personal and social development’ outcomes – the building blocks on the pathway to employment, such as mental health and wellbeing – rather than solely getting a job or sustaining employment. Personal and social development areas of need became more common and  pronounced for children and young people during the pandemic according to grantees, young people and stakeholders. These needs were a result of the disruption that the COVID-19 pandemic caused to children and young people’s daily lives, and the disruption of support routes and opportunities that were more accessible pre-pandemic. The support that grantees delivered often pivoted more towards achieving personal and social development outcomes and less towards entry into EET.

During the period of the evaluation, children and young people supported by Inspiring Futures achieved positive outcomes, as did some families and grantees.

Evidence in this evaluation suggests that children and young people commonly achieved personal and social development outcomes, and many achieved education, employment and training outcomes.

The young people we consulted had a positive experience of the support they received.

Learnings

The programme has pointed to useful learning such as highlighting:

• adaptions that grantees made during the pandemic that they plan to retain in the future
• the type of funding and support grantees find most useful from funders
• the types of practice that grantees find promising or effective and why

Moving into recovery from the pandemic, there was a shared sense that children and young people will continue to require support to reach their potential on their pathways to employment including:

• supporting personal and social development outcomes to build the base for EET outcomes where needed,
• continuing to respond to the impacts of the pandemic on needs, challenges and opportunities
• adapting and responding to the changing wider national economic context and in particular the current cost-of-living crisis,
• further commissioning of work to strengthen evidence of ‘what works’ in this space.

The full report contains specific recommendations for funders and comissioners, policymakers and practitioners.

Further outputs

This report can be read in conjunction with the following outputs, which provide more detail on the findings included in this report:

• Technical appendix – presents the analysis of secondary monitoring report data collected by BBC CIN and YFF as part of Inspiring Futures.
• Deep-dive case studies
• Impacts of COVID-19 report – specific evaluation findings
  relating to the impacts of COVID-19 for children and young people’s pathways to employment and the grantees who support them.
• Tailored summary reports for: (1) practitioners and frontline
  organisations; (2) strategic stakeholders, funders, commissioners and policymakers; and (3) children and young people.