Evaluation of the New South Wales Premier's Youth Initiative - A randomised controlled trial to prevent youth homelessness.

The Premier's Youth Initiative (PYI) PYI aims to reduce youth homelessness for young people leaving out-of-home care (OOHC) in participating regions in New South Wales (NSW). This study aims to investigate whether PYI is effective in preventing or delaying homelessness within the target population. The intervention will consist of multiple components: - A personal advisor who will support the young person during their transition from OOHC - Education and employment mentoring - Accommodation support via subsidised head-leased properties - Transitional support to assist young people to develop their capacity to independently manage their accommodation needs. PYI is designed as individualised support including ongoing support through a personal advisor, education and/or employment mentoring and additional services. A key element of PYI is hereby the focus on evidence-informed practice integration, i.e., that youth are connected to services based on their needs. Services applying evidence-informed practice will be prioritised. A main focus of PYI is to build young people's capacity to live independently. The initiative was designed by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) and the intervention will be delivered by case workers from service provider agencies in collaboration with the personal advisors mentioned above. Hence, the intervention will be delivered as part of the case and support work together with in-person contact with the personal advisor. Additional services will be delivered by provider agencies and mentors as identified in the needs assessment, the leaving care plan and the goals set for the young person leaving care. Duration: The duration of the individual intervention will depend on when children become eligible to participate in the study and the particular needs identified. Overall, the trial is expected to commence in early January 2018 and continue until June 2020. Worker training: Trained consent workers (case workers or youth service workers) will be asked to consent eligible youth to participate in the study and conduct the baseline data collection. To facilitate the consent process and minimise the likelihood of errors during data collection, we will ask case workers to attend a training session on "Obtaining consent and measuring client outcomes". Training is delivered between September 2017 and February 2018 and is usually conducted on a single day at each site. Participant incentives: Following usual practice, participants in both the PYI intervention and BAU groups will receive a small contribution, in form of vouchers, for their participation and in compensation for their time. We anticipate that some youth will be difficult to engage in subsequent interviews. To acknowledge their effort and time to continue their participation, the value will increase for the second and third round of data collection. Process evaluation: The PYI practice model will be refined as part of a process evaluation which will be based on three measures: (1) client satisfaction, (2) implementation fidelity, and (3) perceived barriers and facilitators to implementation. The aim of the process evaluation is to ensure adherence to the PYI practice model and increase program fidelity. The client satisfaction will be measured during three rounds in the first year of the outcomes evaluation to assess the perceived quality of service and whether clients feel that their needs are met. Expected sample size for this component will be six clients. Additionally, PYI service providers will be interviewed three times during the first year of the PYI implementation to systematically detect barriers to the implementation of PYI. Target sample size will be six participants working directly with PYI clients, six supervisors of frontline staff and six participants from senior management. The first two components will include semi-structured interviews, conducted by experienced research staff, to collect data. The third component will focus on whether PYI practice model was implemented as intended. For this analysis, information will be collected using fidelity check-lists that will be administered on a quarterly basis. Information collected as part of the process evaluation will feed directly into a continuous quality improvement cycle in form of quarterly recommendations to be implemented by PYI service providers.