The government has pledged £28m that will go to ten projects supporting disadvantaged children, the minister for civil society announced yesterday.
The £28m funding forms part of the £80m Life Chances Fund, focusing on helping young people into employment by providing education and training. The chosen projects aim to help reduce the number of days young people spend in care and help vulnerable children get prepared for school.
The Life Chances Fund was launched in July 2016 with the aim to support local public sector organisations to commission social impact bonds and other payment-by-results contracts involving "socially-minded investors".
Councils were some of the organisations to receive the largest sums of money, with Sheffield Council receiving £19m which will set up a local projects to help tackle a range of issues from mental health and wellbeing to homelessness and youth unemployment.
Charity Think Forward will be granted £683,620 to implement its Move Forward programme which supports young people aged 14-25 with mild to moderate learning disabilities to develop the aspirations, qualifications and skills they need to realise their potential and gain paid employment.
The Skill Mill, which has locations across the North, will receive £1,793,302 to help get ex-offenders aged 16-18 into paid labour opportunities.
While Innovation Unit in Doncaster will receive £1.8m to “address poor school attendance and education attainment among 11 to 16 year olds who have been identified as having low social mobility and are at risk of becoming not in education, employment or training (NEET)”.
Minister for sport and civil society, Tracey Crouch, said: “The Life Chances Fund is helping transform lives across the country and I am looking forward to seeing how these fantastic projects use this funding to benefit children and young people, teaching them valuable life skills.”
The Life Chances Fund is being delivered on behalf of DCMS by the Big Lottery Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. It is structured around six key themes: drug and alcohol dependency, children’s services, early years, young people, older people’s services, and healthy lives.
To date, a over £45m of Life Chances Fund money has been committed across 20 projects, with more funding to be announced in the summer.
The full list of projects to benefit from this round of funding is available here.
Editor's note
The amount that Skill Mill recieved has been corrected to £1,793,302.
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