King's College London

The Policy Institute at King’s is evaluating DFN Project SEARCH, a supported internships programme that helps young people with a learning disability, autism, or both, move from education to paid employment. The evaluation is funded by Youth Futures Foundation, and carried out in collaboration with DFN Project SEARCH.Young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are much less likely to be in work than their peers. In the UK, fewer than one in five adults with a moderate or severe learning disability are employed, even though many want to work. DFN Project SEARCH offers 16-24-year-olds a nine-month unpaid internship with a host employer. Interns rotate through three departments, gaining at least 700 hours of workplace experience, supported by a college tutor and job coaches. Studies in the US, including a randomised controlled trial, have found large effects on employment, but robust evidence from England is still limited.

Feasibility study: findings now published

From 2024-25, King’s carried out a feasibility study to test whether the programme’s impact could be robustly evaluated. The team surveyed 406 young people at the 2025 site assessment days, analysed assessors’ scoring data, observed seven assessment days, interviewed 19 assessors from colleges, employers and local authorities, and held a series of workshops with DFN Project SEARCH.The report, published in September 2026, finds that:

• DFN Project SEARCH is well-suited to a full-scale impact evaluation, including a randomised controlled trial, due to its established structure, scale of delivery, and strong partnerships and commitment to evaluation
• The process for selecting interns is broadly robust, though it varies between sites in venue, format, and how assessors apply the scoring rubric, and data collection would need strengthening
• The most promising approach is a trial that extends the programme to young people with SEND who do not hold an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), who currently can’t access funded supported internships. This means no young person who would otherwise get a place loses out. The report recommends combining this with a college-level quasi-experimental analysis of historical data.

Read the full feasibility report: https://youthfuturesfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/DFNPS_FeasibilityReport_KCL_YFF-WWP_Sept-2026.pdf

Next phase: full impact evaluation

Building on these findings, we are now conducting full evaluation until the end of 2028. It includes:

• a randomised controlled trial with the 2026 cohort of young people with SEND without an EHCP, across college and employer sites in England. The trial compares employment, confidence, wellbeing and health outcomes with a group receiving their college's usual support.
• a quasi-experimental analysis of the education, employment and training outcomes of young people with EHCPs at colleges running DFN Project SEARCH since 2019, compared with similar colleges.
• an implementation and process evaluation, including interviews with interns, parents and carers, colleges and host employers, to understand how and why the programme works.
• an economic evaluation assessing whether the programme offers value for money for employers, the Exchequer and society.