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Tender Opportunity – Savers Support Fund

26 Jan 2018 - 10:53 by michelle.foster

OnSide Youth Zone Network has secured funding from Nesta and DCMS through the Savers Support Fund to scale the Able to Manage social action programme to improve money management skills and reduce debt for 14-21year olds (up to aged 25 for young people with a disability). OnSide

The initiative delivers one to one money management training through volunteer mentors, up to 2 hours a week over a 10-week period. 360 new volunteers will be mobilised to support 360 beneficiaries across 9 locations: Blackburn, Bolton, Carlisle, Manchester, Oldham, Warrington, Wigan, Wirral and Wolverhampton. The programme brings together the most effective proven elements from money management courses and mentoring schemes already run across the Youth Zones. This has now been codified to develop a delivery model that aims to increase the impact of the work and enable rapid scaling of the approach across the current and growing network. The course will target disadvantaged young people, many of whom are vulnerable and lack good role models.
As the network of Youth Zones grows, OnSide are keen to develop standardised models that are proven effective and to be able to quantify and articulate the impact that these programmes have on young people. OnSide are looking to continue this programme beyond the life of this grant and so are looking to build a bank of independently verified evidence to present to potential funders at a local and national level as well as the funders of this programme. Future funders would likely include private sector patrons and philanthropists as well as potentially housing providers and trusts and grants. Programmes such as the ‘Able to Manage’ initiative form part of the targeted offer, to improve the life chances of those most disadvantaged or at risk.

Youth Zones deliver a broad range of targeted programmes alongside their universal offer with young people moving fluidly between services and activities according to their needs and interests at different times in their life. As with other targeted programmes young people will be referred on to this programme (they can self-refer) on the basis of a number of risk factors including having poor role models around money management, displaying poor decision making or are concerned about their ability to manage money, moving into independent living or employment for the first time. They will be supported through 1-2-1 mentoring from a volunteer mentor for a minimum of 10 weeks to gain the necessary understanding and skills to increase their confidence resilience and life skills ultimately leading to them being better able to achieve in employment, education or training, successfully manage a home and have improved wellbeing.

Each of the 9 Youth Zones involved will work with 10 young people each quarter between January and December 2018 resulting in each having worked with 40 over the year.

OnSide are seeking to appoint an evaluator to carry out an impact evaluation as they scale this programme. Alongside this they would like the evaluator to support with some elements of process or formative evaluation, to help to understand in what circumstances and with whom the programme has greatest value, and where OnSide could particularly benefit from improving their approaches to enable greater impact. This is primarily to understand the impact and continue to improve the model based on the learning of the nine youth zones as it grows.

For further information, visit: www.onsideyouthzones.org/tender-opportunity-savers-support-fund/

Deadline: Friday 2 February 2018, 17:00

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