pay for success

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has made $76 million available for projects that give state or local governments a free trial of promising programs in key social services areas, including child welfare and juvenile justice.

In August of 2012, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a project through which his foundation and Goldman Sachs would pay for a project aimed at lowering the recidivism of adolescent males incarcerated at Rikers Island, New York’s massive and potentially doomed prison-plex.

Connecticut has announced it is underway with a pay-for-success venture that will reward private funders if they are successful in using a substance abuse treatment model to curb re-referrals to, and out-of-home placements made by, child protective services.

Yesterday, Senators Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced legislation to address the needs of the nation’s most at-risk youth. The Child Outcomes Need New Efficient Community Teams (CONNECT) Act seeks to improve outcomes for youth in contact with both the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.

Youth Services Insider has learned that Youth Advocate Programs (YAP), one of the few national providers of community-based programs for juvenile offenders, has entered into its first pay-for-success (PFS) venture. The Harrisburg, Penn.-based

Patrick Lester, who for years headed the public policy shop for the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, now leads the Social Innovation Research Center. He’s pretty much a one-man show there as he builds the organization, and he has primarily focused the center’s attention on pay-for-success and social impact bonds.

There is a whole lot of youth-related legislation in the ole’ congressional hopper these days. And with Congress revved up for bipartisan compromise, it’s almost certain to move! Alright, half that statement is true.

Way back in 2012, in one of our first Youth Services Insider columns, we discussed the potential "Dawn of the American Social Impact Bond" as interest in the concept spread from across the pond.

In March, we reported that National Council on Crime and Delinquency President Alex Busansky had left in fairly abrupt fashion to start a new shop: Impact Justice (IJ), an Oakland-based organization that begins with a mission to reduce “the number of people involved in our juvenile and adult criminal justice system,” improve “conditions for those who remain incarcerated,” and provide “meaningful opportunities for success for those rejoining our communities.”