Programme type: Summer Youth Employment Programmes
Evaluation type: Co-design and feasibility study
Status: In progress
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), in partnership with the Department for Culture, Media, & Sport (DCMS), and the Youth Futures Foundation (YFF) are launching a new and exciting project to design, set up, deliver, and evaluate a new Summer Jobs programme for the UK. Over a three-year period, YEF expect the project to reach around 2,600 young people.
Summer Youth Employment Schemes (SYEPs), which provide vulnerable young people with short-term paid employment during the school summer holidays, are common in major US cities. There have been several evaluations of SYEPs in the US, and although the findings are mixed in terms of education and future employment outcomes, they do show a promising general trend in reduction of crime and violence. Given this, the Youth Endowment Fund is interested in establishing if these findings can be replicated in the UK
The Lab will be working with the Delivery Partner to design and establish a SYEP in the UK, which will run for the first time in July 2024 and go through multiple stages of evaluation to understand it’s deliverability, acceptability and impact. Subject to approval the Lab will lead the first evaluation phase, conducting a feasibility study to determine whether the programme can be delivered with fidelity, to learn about barriers and facilitators to implementation and to allow YEF and other partners to determine whether or not to proceed to impact evaluation.
