Dartington Service Design Lab are the lead partner in the #iwill Fund Impact Evaluation and Learning Contract.

The #iwill Fund is a collaboration between The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), working with match funders to support young people to access high quality social action. Social action involves activities such as campaigning, fundraising, and volunteering, all of which enable young people to make a positive difference in their communities as well as develop their own skills and knowledge.

Connected Futures is a £16m programme that seeks to change the journey from education to employment for young people facing exclusion and disadvantage. It aims to support the development of local approaches to youth employment that put young people at the heart of the system, from schools and employers to housing, health and care. Blackpool is one of several areas funded by the Youth Futures Foundation to embark on systemic changes to reduce the numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET).

The ThinkForward: FutureMe programme works with young people to support their continuation in education, employment, and training and to prevent them from being identified as “Neet.” They use a blended approach of one-to-one and group coaching sessions delivered by trained coaches who support the young people to work through the seven work “work readiness capabilities” of being; self-aware, driven, resilient, self-assured, organised, and a good communicator. These qualities have been identified as being desirable by employers. The programme also offers business mentoring, CV writing and interview skills workshops, work experience placements, and parental engagement.

We have joined forces with PEDAL to apply our rapid-cycle design and testing approach in a new and exciting way. For us, it’s learning how our approach works when driven by others, with us riding along and coaching in the backseat. For our partners, it’s learning whether they can use our approach to quickly adapt for online delivery of an evidence-based face-to-face book sharing intervention

The Family Nurse Partnership is adapting its home visiting parenting programme to enable their highly trained Family Nurses to deliver a more personalised programme to their clients, who are first time young mothers. FNP site have also designed some changes to the clinical content that  they  deliver that is also being tested.

A project aimed at improving a child mentoring service  using rapid cycle design and testing. We have partnered with Chance UK to  improve the design, implementation  and continuous monitoring of  the My  Future project:  a 9-month child mentoring service delivered to  50 children in Camden and Southwark, London.