Peterborough isn’t quite a perfect outcome but it is is very encouraging while SIB News also looks at UK tax relief issues, an interesting pair of British stories to end the week – happy reading!
Social Impact Bonds: Relief For Class Of 2015 In UK
Ellie Ward – Pioneers Post
Two new social impact bonds launched in the UK last week are the first to take advantage of social investment tax relief.
The bonds, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government and structured by Triodos Bank, will provide £910,000 to enable four charities to help young people who are homeless or are at risk of becoming homeless find secure accommodation.
The first of the social impact bonds (SIBs) will be taken up by Ambition East Midlands – a newly formed partnership of three local charities including P3, YMCA Derbyshire and The Y. It aims to support 340 young people.
CEO at P3, one of the winners at the 2013 RBS SE100 Awards which celebrate the UK’s top social enterprises, Mark Simms, said: “In the current economic climate charities are having to look for alternative and more innovative ways of sourcing funding.
“We passionately believe that these new services will fundamentally change the lives of young people around the country.”
The second of the SIBs will be taken up by Aspire Gloucestershire. This is a partnership between CCP and P3 and will work with 150 young people in the Gloucestershire region, which is in the south-west of the UK.
How Did You… Improve Reoffending Rates?
Colin Marrs – CSW
In 2010, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) introduced two pilots to test its theory that outcome-based contracts were likely to achieve better results than traditional models of service delivery. Ian Poree, director of rehabilitation services at NOMS, says: “The idea was to open up the market to a wider range of providers while transferring some of the risk to the contractors.”
At Peterborough, a social impact bond model was chosen: 17 bodies invested £5m in rehabilitation interventions for three groups of 1,000 male offenders sentenced to less than a year. Investors would get their money back if reoffending dropped below pre-defined levels. At Doncaster, Serco, in partnership with charities Catch 22 and Turning Point, saw a proportion of its contract value reliant on a fall.
The results for the first cohort at Peterborough saw reconviction rates 8.4% lower compared to a national control group. This was tantalisingly short of the 10% required for an early repayment but the pilot is still on track to achieve an overall target of 7.5% across all three groups – which will unlock another reimbursement. At Doncaster, reconviction rates fell 5.7% from the baseline year of 2009 – which met the 5% threshold required for full contract payment.
The pilots were challenging, given it was the first time the MoJ had used an outcome-based contract model. Poree says: “We had to mobilise a market to take part but strike a balance between ensuring the court sentences were delivered while ensuring flexibility to the providers to meet the outcomes.”
Measuring success was also crucial, with such large financial rewards at stake for government and its contractors. An independent process to test the outcomes was used to ensure confidence in the results.
The scheme has now been scrapped as part of wider probation reforms at the MoJ. But Poree says that the successful pilots were far from a waste. “The mainstream solution has been able to learn from what was effective, which helped us attract bidders for the probation contracts,” he says.