Essex County Council - Evaluation of the Multi-Systemic Therapy Social Impact Bond

Essex County Council (ECC) Family Operations Service currently provides access to Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) to young people who meet the referral criteria. This service is aimed at supporting young people and their families where there is a risk of a young person entering care (which also includes young people remanded into custody), and has the intention of keeping the young person within the family home whenever it is safe to do so. This service is being funded via a Social Impact Bond (SIB) and is being delivered by an external provider.

In 2013 Traverse (under our former name, OPM) were commissioned to deliver a three-year independent evaluation of the MST SIB, using funding from Central Government.

The evaluation will generate:

• A replicable methodology for capturing any value added by the SIB
• Recommendations for improving the delivery of MST through a SIB in Essex
• Recommendations for improved future working of SIBs.

The evaluation involves capturing both qualitative and quantitative data. This is the first of two interim reports and presents the findings from the first eighteen months of evaluation activities. The evaluation will run until March 2016, culminating in a final summative report.