Foyer Central Social Impact Bond Evaluation 2022

Foyer Central is currently delivered through a consortium between Uniting, St George Community Housing (SGCH) and Social Ventures Australia (SVA). Uniting entered into an outcomes-based contract with the NSW Government to deliver the Foyer Central program over a 10-year period. Through the Foyer Central Social Impact Bond (SIB) established by Social Ventures Australia (SVA), private investors provided $7 million of upfront capital to fund the delivery of the Foyer Central Program. Within New South Wales (NSW), Foyer Central applies an ‘Advantaged Thinking’ model to support young people who are exiting out-of-home care (OOHC) and who are at risk of homelessness, or experiencing homelessness, to achieve greater economic independence. It supports Focus 2.2 of the NSW Homelessness Strategy — to provide targeted housing options to prevent homelessness or chronic homelessness for high-risk groups.

EY has been engaged to undertake an iterative evaluation to assess the efficacy of the service between 2021-2026 through a combination of process evaluation, outcomes evaluation and economic analysis. An evaluation framework was developed through a co-design approach to outline the objectives of the three components, as well as the data collection, analysis and reporting required to answer various evaluation questions across the evaluation timeline. The objective of the first iteration is to explore the implementation and preliminary outcomes of Foyer Central in its first year, and to support decisions for continuous refinement of the program. The findings and recommendations have been documented in this baseline report.