Cash Transfers for Care Leavers (360G-cabinetoffice-G2-GA-202210824149-22-23)

This grant will fund research into the impact of providing care leavers with a lump sum cash transfer.This project has two main research questions;1) What is the impact of providing cash transfers to care leavers on their 18th birthdayon their likelihood of becoming homeless2) Are cash transfers of this kind value for moneyWithin the first question, we have three main outcome measures;1) Number of spells of homelessness2) Total number of days experiencing homeless3) An aggregate measure capturing both (1) and (2)In the longer term, we will investigate impacts on secondary outcomes including educationalattainment and progression, employment, and contact with the criminal justice system. As Homelessness is a foundational outcome, which is both predicted by, and predicts, a rangeof other shared outcomes, this evaluation will be designed to ensure that any benefits acrossdifferent policy domains and shared outcomes are measured. Due to the nature of theintervention, we will also investigate the impacts on young peoples finances, financialcapability, and sense of financial security, including income from jobs, amounts of debt, andso on.This longer term follow up will be made dramatically easier by selecting our sample fromyoung people within the COSMO Cohort Study, who will continue to be followed up byresearchers into the long term (some cohort studies have run for several decades).