Guidance

Family finding, befriending and mentoring programmes: application guide for local authorities

Published 21 July 2023

Applies to England

Overview

A stable support network and loving relationships are crucial to supporting children in care and care leavers to thrive. As published by Coram Voice in What makes life good? Care leavers’ views on their well-being, many children leave care without stable relationships around them. The report says:

• 6% of care leavers report having no one at all providing emotional support
• nearly 10% of young people only had support from their leaving care worker
• 22% of care leavers feel lonely always or often, compared to 10% of the general population

Our ambitions for reform set out in Children’s social care: stable homes, built on love strategy and consultation, put loving and stable relationships at the heart of children’s social care. This includes the mission that by 2027, every care-experienced child and young person will feel that they have strong, loving relationships in place.

To support this, the Department for Education (DfE) is providing funding to significantly increase the number of local authorities with family finding, befriending and mentoring programmes for children in care and care leavers.

These programmes will help children in care and care leavers to identify and connect with the important people in their lives and create safe, stable, loving relationships.

This guidance sets out the opportunity for local authorities to apply for grant funding to deliver family finding, befriending and mentoring programmes in their locality.

By ‘children in care’ we are referring to children who are looked after by a local authority as defined in section 22 of the Children Act 1989. This applies to any child aged between 0 and 18 who is subject to a care order or interim care order, or who is accommodated by the local authority.

By ‘care leavers’ we mean young people who have been in care for at least 13 weeks, some of which must have been after their 16th birthday.

Available funding

DfE is providing £30.1 million to support local authorities with programmes over the next 2 financial years:

• £11.7 million in financial year 2023 to 2024
• £18.4 million in financial year 2024 to 2025

Further funding in 2024 to 2025 will be subject to progress in 2023 to 2024. Funding will be ringfenced through section 14 of the Education Act 2002 grants.

The funding can be used to commission a third-party provider or to fund in-house delivery of a programme.

The total amount of funding will be split between programmes as follows:

• 70%, or £21.07 million, for family finding programmes
• 30%, or £9.03 million, for befriending and mentoring programmes

Following the assessment of applications, if one programme requires less funding than the original allocation, the remaining funding will be added towards the other programme.

Applications for family finding programmes and befriending and mentoring programmes will be assessed separately. Local authorities may apply for both programmes and should submit a separate application for each.

Programme objectives

Local authorities should ensure that their programmes reflect the voices and needs of children and young people. Local authorities are encouraged to consider how best to engage strategic partners, third-party providers, volunteer organisations and the wider community in the delivery of their programme.

Programmes must enable children and young people to:

• identify and connect with the important people in their lives
• improve their sense of identify and community
• create and sustain consistent, stable, loving relationships

The overarching aim is that these programmes will lead to a reduction in the number of young people reporting:

• loneliness
• having no one they can trust or no one who will be there for them
• that they do not have a really good friend

Programmes must have or must build on an existing evidence base that demonstrates positive outcomes for children and young people.

The safety and wellbeing of children and young people is paramount, and therefore programmes must:

• have appropriate safeguarding measures in place for children, young people and adults
• ensure that children and young people are supported during and beyond engagement with the programme

Local authorities may choose to support a specific age range or group of young people through their programme, for example care experienced young people leaving the prison system. Funding can be used to support costs related to:

• staffing capacity
• expertise
• resources
• the ongoing delivery of their programme
• third-party costs

Funding cannot be used for capital costs.

Eligibility

Individual local authorities, or a local authority on behalf of a consortia of up to 5 local authorities, can apply for funding. Local authorities can partner with third parties, voluntary organisations or other strategic partners as part of their bid.

The lead local authority in a consortia will be responsible for the grant funding and all reporting requirements set out in the grant funding agreement and terms and conditions.

How to apply

The application period will open from midday on 21 July 2023 and will close at 5pm on 25 August 2023.

Download and complete the application form.

The form contains information to help you complete it.

Email a Word or PDF version of your completed application form to relationships.CSC@education.gov.uk. Include your local authority name and the words ‘relationships programme application’ in the email subject field. You will receive an email response letting you know that we’ve received your application.

We will not be able to consider applications that miss the deadline.

We’ll notify the named contact from each application about the outcome of their application by email. We aim to notify local authorities by October 2023.

Estimated dates and milestones for the application process are as follows:

• application round opens - 21 July 2023 at midday
• deadline for applications - 25 August 2023 at 5pm
• applications are assessed - September and October 2023
• local authorities notified of outcomes - October 2023
• project launch event - early November 2023

Assessing applications

We will consider a programme where it:

• has or builds on an existing evidence base that demonstrates positive outcomes for children and young people
• establishes a new offer outside of existing support already available or extends an existing programme to a new group of young people
• addresses a specific need identified by the local authority and has a clear delivery model in place (either through a third-party provider or in-house offer)

We will not consider a programme where it:

• delivers a service that is currently a statutory duty or is already funded by the local authority or a third party
• is new provision that does not build on or have an existing evidence base that demonstrates positive outcomes for children and young people
• does not meet the objectives of the funding, for example mentoring where it is short term and solely focused on employment or career progression

As part of your application, you should provide a detailed breakdown of costs for each financial year, based on an indicative cost range of £7,100 to £10,600 per young person. Applications that exceed this indicative cost range will be deemed unsuccessful.

We will give consideration to the level of funding requested to see if it is suitable against the proposed areas of spend and whether it achieves value for money.

Scoring

Applications will be evaluated by an assessment panel within DfE and will be assessed using a 5-point scale for each question. Bids will first be scored individually by each panel member then a consensus score will be agreed in moderation. Bids that score less than 2 or below on any single question for their consensus score will automatically be deemed unsuccessful.

Applications will be given a final score which will be used to select successful applications.

Score of 0: does not meet the requirement

Does not comply or there is insufficient information to demonstrate that the bidder has the understanding and skills required to provide the services, with little or no evidence to support the response.

Score of 1: major reservations

Considerable reservations of the bidder’s understanding and skills or capability required to provide the services, with little or no evidence to support the response.

Score of 2: minor reservations

Some minor reservations of the bidder’s understanding and skills or capability required to provide the services, with little or no evidence to support the response.

Score of 3: satisfies the requirement

Demonstration in the bid of the understanding and skills or capability required to provide the services, with evidence to support the response.

Score of 4: satisfies the requirement with minor additional benefits

Above average demonstration in the bid of the understanding and skills or capability required to provide the services. Response identifies factors that will offer potential added value, with evidence to support the response.

Score of 5: exceeds the requirement

Exceptional demonstration in the bid of the understanding and skills or capability required to provide the services. Response identifies factors that will offer potential added value, with evidence to support the response.

Weighting

Each question in section 2 of the application form will be weighted differently, with some questions having a higher percentage and therefore equating to more of the overall score, as summarised in the table.

Question	Weighting
Aims, objectives and programme model (800 words)	50%
Delivery model (500 words)	25%
Resource and governance (500 words)	15%
Delivery plan	10%

Awarding the funding

Where the number of successful applications exceeds the total amount of funding available:

• funding will be prioritised to the highest scoring bidders.
• the amount awarded to a bidding local authority may be less than the total value applied for

This means a bidder will not necessarily receive funding if they score at least a 3 for all questions.

In the event of a tie, we reserve the right to award based on the highest number of children and young people that can be supported through the available funding.

If there is a concentration of successful bids in a region, we reserve the right to prioritise bids of an equal score in different regions to enable greater geographical spread.

Successful applications

If your application is successful, you will be expected to comply with our grant funding terms and conditions. Failure to comply with the terms and conditions will affect payment of the grant.

Grant funding will run until the end of March 2025. After the funding period ends, we will ask local authorities to continue to report outcomes until September 2025. This will allow us to gather information about how local authorities embed and sustain these programmes beyond the funding period.

You will be required to provide a profile of expenditure for each programme per year, and to revise these profiles throughout the year, when required.

In addition, you will need to submit a quarterly report to DfE, setting out:

• progress against delivery plans and any changes or delays to planned activity
• qualitative and quantitative data to support the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the programme (we’ll provide a reporting template)

The reporting schedule and profile of expenditure will form part of the grant agreement.

You will be required to provide a statement of grant usage within 28 days of the end of each financial year. The statement of grant usage should be signed off by an appropriate person within the local authority.

Payment schedule

Payments will be made quarterly in arrears on receipt of an invoice and sufficient evidence of progress against delivery objectives and spend against the payment profile.

Year 2 funding will be paid subject to progress against delivery plans and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Working with DfE

Successful local authorities will be required to attend a project launch event in early November 2023. We’ll confirm the date and venue once the application round has closed.

In addition, we’ll invite them to join a community of practice. The group will share learning and provide support and insight to all local authorities during the programme.

Working with our evaluator

We expect successful applicants to work closely with our evaluator. This will involve:

• setting up the evaluation
• taking part in a logic model session to define the intervention
• supporting data collection exercises, including:
  • setting up data sharing processes
  • referring participants and other stakeholders for interview
  • collecting administrative data
  • sharing surveys
• attending regular meetings with the evaluator

We will provide further details on the evaluation design and criteria in due course.