Transforming employment systems and support for…

Ankita Saxena
Ankita is an Associate Director at Social Finance and heads up our Employment and Skills Community of Impact.

Social Finance is the learning partner for Connected Futures – an initiative by the Youth Futures Foundation, supporting young people to find good, sustainable work.

We’re so pleased to be working with Social Finance on our flagship place-based programme, Connected Futures. This programme helps partnerships across the country to develop and foster localised solutions that break down barriers and improve access to employment for young people. Together we can help young people receive the right employment support from the right place at the right time to help them into the right jobs for them.

Louise Rands, Head of Connected Futures, Youth Futures Foundation

The hurdles to young people finding work are significant. At the end of 2024, there were 987,000 young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the UK — an 11-year high.

Contributing factors include the lingering economic and societal effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and insufficient targeted support. Many of those who do find work then face job insecurity and low-quality opportunities.

Connected Futures – a Youth Futures Foundation programme – sets out to tackle this by funding partnerships across England to design and implement systems-change initiatives that improve employment outcomes for young people.

Across the country, there is a real desire to co-produce solutions with young people themselves, and to ensure they get involved in every decision. From redesigning the curriculum to working with employers to reduce stigma and improve accessibility, the programme is testing bold and imaginative ways to get young people into work.

At Social Finance we understand the barriers facing the most ‘invisible’ young people, including those excluded from schools, care leavers, and those with mental health challenges and neurodiversity.

As a learning partner we bring considerable experience and expertise from across our portfolio of work, particularly in the following areas:

Systems change & place

Our Routes to Scale Framework, the tool we developed to define success and the means to achieve it, underpins all our work.

We have developed several bespoke tools for partnerships to examine their systems change journeys.

As the learning partner for the Changing Futures programme we supported cross-sector partnerships to understand systems change.

Working with young people

We have worked in Bristol, and continue to do so in Bury, to tackle the Special Educational Needs & Disabilities (SEND) crisis.

We were the learning partner for The Henry Smith Charity’s grant programme around advocacy services for people with learning disabilities.

We know that to change to hearts and minds, young people’s voices and experiences need to be amplified.

Employment

As leaders of IPS Grow, we have supported scaling up the Integrated Placement and Support model, which has helped thousands of young people to find and sustain jobs.

Our new community of practice has a growing portfolio of work to transform employment and skills for everyone to achieve their full potential – including in Cheshire and Merseyside as part of the Get Britain Working agenda.

What we will do to support the Connected Futures programme

Bring partnerships, researchers and young people together in regular networks, to promote nationwide peer-learning and collaboration.

Capture and disseminate key insights and best practices emerging from the programme, ensuring that valuable knowledge is shared widely to inform future initiatives.

Support partnerships to develop the required skills and knowledge to deliver effective programmes.

Use the evidence generated by Connected Futures to help Youth Futures Foundation influence change that supports young people’s employment outcomes.

Make connections across partnerships, researchers and evaluators, to draw out learnings from the initiative.