What Works
Reboot West III impact evaluation
Exploring what works for supporting care-experienced young people into good work, further education or training
The systems challenge
Care experienced young people experience significant marginalisation within the labour market. They are much more likely to be not in education, employment or training compared to their peers and often encounter precarious employment conditions once in employment.
Our aim
To build robust evidence about what works to support care experienced young people into good work .
What are we doing?
We have commissioned a randomised controlled trial (RCT) exploring the impact of the Reboot West III programme.
This is the first high-quality trial exploring the impact of a programme of therapeutic support on the employment, education and training outcomes of care experienced young people.
Findings will be reported in early 2027.
What are RCTs?
Read more about What are RCTs?Randomised controlled trials are a type of high-quality scientific experiment originally used in medical research.
They are often considered the “gold standard” for generating evidence because randomisation is used to reduce or remove sources of bias, allowing us to rigorously examine cause-effect relationships between a change in practice, or ‘intervention’, and an outcome.
Programme overview
The Reboot West III programme is delivered by 1625 Independent People, working in partnership with four Local Authorities in the south-west of England.
The programme supports care-experienced young people through an intensive coaching model based on a youth version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Evaluation approach
Conducted by Business in the Community, the RCT will be used to evaluate the impact of Reboot West III on the employment, education and training outcomes (EET) of care experienced young people compared to the usual local offer they would otherwise receive from Local Authorities.
427 young people are participating in the trial, of which:
- 265 are receiving support through the Reboot programme
- 162 are receiving business as usual support from their Local Authority
Alongside the RCT, Business in the Community is conducting an implementation and process evaluation exploring how, why, and in what conditions the Reboot programme may contribute improved EET outcomes for experienced young people.
A cost benefit analysis will also explore the value for money that the Reboot programme provides.
Building on previous learnings
This RCT is the result of previous research in collaboration with 1625IP and BIT:
- A ‘feasibility study’ exploring whether the Reboot intervention was suitable to measure through an impact evaluation and which evaluation design would be optimal;
- A qualitative ‘process study’ looking at how the programme was operating, and whether there were any obstacles to implementing an impact evaluation in practice;
- A theory of change and participant tracing analysis to deeply understand how the model of support works and how young people achieve outcomes through the model.
Insights from this work indicated impact evaluation was feasible and that a RCT was the most suitable design.
