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General overview

Stage of development: Complete

Policy sector: Homelessness

Date outcomes contract signed: Oct 2019

Start date of service provision: Sep 2019

Anticipated completion date: Sep 2024

Capital raised (min/max investment): GBP 3.47m (USD 4.43m) - GBP 5.88m (USD 7.50m)

Max potential outcome payment: GBP 22.30m

Service users: 6k+ individuals

Intervention

Kirklees Better Outcomes Partnership (KBOP) was developed in 2019 to provide support to enable independent living and prevent homelessness by delivering better outcomes for individuals across Kirklees. The strengths of the KBOP partnership are their scale of delivery, shared expertise and participant focused approach.
Commissioned by Kirklees Council with support from the Life Chances Fund, KBOP is a consortium of eight local organisations, each with expert levels of knowledge and experience across housing, homelessness prevention, domestic abuse, substance misuse, offending and mental health. Support Workers employ a holistic and strengths-based approach to ensure the individual leads their support, providing the space for independent decision making and shared ownership of interventions and actions. By listening, empowering and enabling individuals across Kirklees to achieve their unique ambitions, they support outcomes encompassing well-being, accommodation, employment and education

Target population

The cohort will be people over the age of 16 who have vulnerabilities and support needs that may impact on their ability to live independently and who may, without support, be at increased risk of homelessness due to their disabilities, vulnerabilities, issues or lifestyle factors that increase this risk. They are, for example, people who are homeless, at risk of becoming homeless or with a history of repeat homelessness, offenders, people with mental health problems, learning disabilities, those that abuse substances, those at risk of domestic abuse, care leavers or young people at risk including young parents, refugees.

Location

Country

  • United Kingdom

Service delivery locations

  • Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council

Involved organisations

Outcome metrics

  • Metric 1: 1st Wellbeing Assessment
  • Metric 2: 2nd Wellbeing Asessment
  • Metric 3: 3rd Wellbeing Asessment
  • Metric 4: 1st Wellbeing Improvement
  • Metric 5: 2nd Wellbeing Improvement
  • Metric 6: Mental Health - Accessing Services
  • Metric 7: Mental Health Sustained Engagement
  • Metric 8: Substance Misuse - Accessing Services
  • Metric 9: Substance Misuse - Sustained Engagement
  • Metric 10: Access to Legal Protection
  • Metric 11: Achieve Financial Resilience
  • Metric 12: Empower, Promote Independence
  • Metric 13: Prevention, Relief or Entry into Accommodation
  • Metric 14: Risk Reduction Domestic Abuse
  • Metric 15: Compliance with or Completion of a Statutory Order
  • Metric 16: 3 months Accommodation Sustainment
  • Metric 17: 6 months Accommodation Sustainment
  • Metric 18: 12 months Accommodation Sustainment
  • Metric 19: 18 months Accommodation Sustainment
  • Metric 20: Entry into Education
  • Metric 21: Part Qualification (includes a first and second part qualification)
  • Metric 22: Full Qualification (includes a first and second full qualification)
  • Metric 23: Entry into Employment (includes a second entry into employment, which was a temporary outcome metric during the COVID pandemic)
  • Metric 24: 6.5 weeks Employment Sustainment
  • Metric 25: 13 weeks Employment Sustainment
  • Metric 26: 26 weeks Employment Sustainment
  • Metric 27: Entry into Volunteering
  • Metric 28: 6 weeks Volunteering
  • Metric 29: Entry into Work Experience
  • Metric 30: 6 weeks Work Experience

Results

KBOP started delivering services in September 2019 and finished in September 2024. Data was last updated in December 2025. These are final results.

Outcome achievements

Overall target is based on the high case scenario defined in the Life Chances Fund Final Award Offer or Variation Agreements.

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Bridges Outcomes Partnership's interpretation of this figure:


The previous traditional contract focused on throughput. No longer term outcomes (e.g. accommodation stability or employment) were measured, nor were any meaningful reports of individuals’ wellbeing over time. The old service experienced a high number of participants re-referred back after exiting, because they continued to experience difficulties. GO Lab’s first evaluation report analysed the problems created by this traditional way of contracting.

The new service instead focused on improving outcomes. The partnership was allowed to personalise its service around each individual, aiming for the outcomes most relevant to achieve meaningful change for each person. The first iteration of the contract retained some short-term measures alongside longer-term measures of accommodation stability and employment. However, KBOP partners found during the first year that retaining even this small number of short-term measures was not helpful and volunteered to eliminate them, shifting the outcomes payments profile towards an even higher proportion of riskier longer-term outcomes. Kirklees Council was happy to make this adjustment. The new contract aimed to help each person more effectively and sustainably, reduce the need for re-referrals, and ultimately help more than double the number of people over the life of the service, compared to the previous contract. 

Further information about KBOP, including participant case studies, are available on the KBOP and Go Lab websites. Full details of every outcome paid for by government, and the precise amount paid for each, is published on the Bridges Outcomes Partnerships website.

Outcome payments

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Bridges Outcomes Partnership's interpretation of this figure:

The new contract set a value for each positive outcome successfully achieved, for each person. If the performance of the service had remained the same as under the previous contract, total payments to KBOP under this new mechanism would have been less than £10m over the five-year term.  In order to achieve (or exceed) the full contract value of £22.3m, the partnership needed to completely redesign the service around each person, find ways to achieve meaningful, sustainable change for as many as possible, dramatically reduce re-referrals and deliver this better, more effective support to more than twice as many people. 

Ultimately, the partnership was able to help more than twice as many people, more effectively.  Re-referral rates dropped by more than two-thirds, and accommodation and employment outcomes significantly improved. An independent evaluation commissioned by HM Treasury concluded that during the new outcomes-based contract, participants had more time in employment, with higher earnings and a lower reliance on housing benefit. This was achieved at 33% lower cost per person than the previous contract.

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