Inclusive Economy Partnership Transition to Work Challenge

What was the Inclusive Economy Partnership Transition to Work Challenge?

Between August 2017 and September 2018, Challenge Works delivered the Inclusive Economy Partnership Accelerator, a key part of the partnership supported by the Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

The IEP is a partnership of businesses, civil society and government departments, working together to solve some of society’s toughest challenges, helping all communities and everyone within them to feel they belong to and can participate in the UK economy.

What happened?

In this strand of the IEP focusing on support young people’s transition to work, we provided funding and non-financial support to seven organisations in the transition to work stream, helping the movement of young people from education, unemployment or inactivity into jobs.

We supported seven organisations in the transition to work stream, helping the movement of young people from education, unemployment or inactivity into jobs.

The organisations aimed to achieve this through:

• Building engagement with the world of work through platforms that link employers to schools, young people and their parents or carers.
• Supporting activities for young people that help them to gain access to skills and experiences that develop their resilience and employability.
• Enabling businesses to adapt their processes for hiring, structuring roles and engaging new employees so that young people can be supported to successfully progress.

From the spring to the autumn of 2017, we undertook a discovery phase to determine the best approach with greatest impact. An open call process for the Partnership Accelerator programme and support, including a grant of £20,000 ran from autumn 2017 until spring 2018.

From spring to autumn 2018, we delivered a rapid six-month Partnership Accelerator programme to help the seven transition-to-work innovations scale. Using the specific partnership accelerator model we developed, we focused on two components of support for the social innovators: support for scaling – provided directly from Nesta (and through procured specialist support) and support for development of partnerships – with delivery group members and others.

Impact of the Prize

The seven innovators developed more than 20 partnerships in total that increased their combined expected new revenue streams by £802,000.

Across the broader IEP, innovators have developed 100 confirmed partnerships, far exceeding the original programme target of nine partnerships.

Eighty-nine per cent of social innovators surveyed indicated that they were extremely or very well progressed relative to their scaling plans by September 2018.