Kickstart Scheme: A Quantitative Impact Assessment
This report presents an impact assessment and accompanying cost-benefit analysis of the Kickstart scheme, which ran from September 2020 to March 2022.
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Details
Research background
Kickstart was aimed at 16 to 24 year olds on Universal Credit (UC) at risk of long-term unemployment. Kickstart was launched during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Kickstart was designed to mitigate the long-term effects of unemployment by providing 25 hours a week of subsidised employment for six months.
This report evaluates how effective Kickstart was at moving people into unsubsidised employment and off Universal Credit receipt over a two year period.
The report also makes a value for money assessment of the scheme over a five year period.
Contribution to the evidence base
The Department for Work and Pensions has published a process evaluation of Kickstart. This project assesses the qualitative impact of Kickstart on participants and employers, and is a complementary report to this analysis.
Research value
The research focuses on a challenging period of time when the number of Universal Credit claimants had risen quickly and a large new number of support offers had been introduced to help people gain employment. It helped the department to understand how well employment support was being delivered and provided assurance that policy design was effective at moving people into unsubsidised employment.