This year marks an important milestone for Care to Career — as we move into the co-creation and mobilisation phase of a major randomised controlled trial (RCT) exploring what works to support care-experienced young people into good work.

Care to Career is Drive Forward Foundation’s long-term, intensive employment programme in London. It’s built around personalised, trauma-informed support that responds to the structural barriers care-experienced young people face when trying to access education, employment and training.

Over the past few years, we’ve been working closely with Youth Futures Foundation and King’s College London to understand whether Care to Career is suitable for formal impact evaluation — and how an RCT could be designed in a way that is ethical, practical and grounded in young people’s lived experience. King’s College London’s earlier pilot evaluation confirmed that this was the right next step.

Building the foundations together

The mobilisation phase is about more than technical trial design. It’s about building the right conditions for success — for young people, for delivery partners, and for the local authorities referring into the programme.

We’re currently working alongside nine London local authority partners who will take part in this phase, supported by London Improvement and Innovation Alliance as an intermediary partner. Together, we’re co-creating referral pathways, testing processes, and ensuring the trial works in the real-world context local authorities and young people operate in.

Throughout this phase, young people themselves are central — helping shape how the programme is delivered, how consent and choice are handled, and how outcomes are defined.

Why this matters

Care-experienced young people remain significantly over-represented among those not in education, employment or training. Too often, programmes are rolled out nationally without a strong evidence base — or without meaningful involvement from the young people they are designed to serve.

This trial aims to change that. From 2026, around 550 young people are expected to take part, with half receiving Care to Career support and half accessing the local offer available through their local authority. The findings will help strengthen the evidence base around what works — and what needs to change — in supporting care-experienced young people into sustainable employment.

Learning as we go

Delivering a programme at this scale, alongside a rigorous evaluation, requires openness, partnership and learning. The co-creation and mobilisation phase gives us the space to get this right — aligning delivery, evaluation and systems practice before the trial formally launches.

We’re proud to be contributing to a growing body of evidence alongside partners across the sector, and we’ll continue sharing learning as this work develops.