A £15m fund to support young homeless people, where bidders will be assessed on the level of social investment they attract, has been jointly launched by two government departments.

The Fair Chance Fund, which is jointly supported by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Cabinet Office, is currently inviting expressions of interest.

It is a payment by results programme which will fund providers to move homeless young people into sustainable accommodiation and into employment, education or training.

Bidders will be eligible for payments of up to £15,000 per individual. They can bid for the right to work with between 50 and 600 individuals, and must bid for funding of between £500,000 and £3m.

The document says providers will have to work with social investors or philanthropists to provide them with the up front capital to deliver services without jeopardising their own organisation.

It says: “One of the objectives of the scheme is to develop the social investment market and the level of social investment will be one of the criteria against which we assess full bids."

It says a specified aim of the fund is to develop and strengthen the capacity of the social investment market to deliver results within the programme.

The document says the fund aims to move at least 2,500 homeless, young people not in education, employment or training into sustainable accommodation and at least 1,000 of those into sustained employment, education or training from January 2015 to December 2017.

It says chosen providers within the programme will start work in January 2015 and the first results payments will be available from April 2015.

It says very small organisations are unlikely to be able to manage the scale of the provision needed or to be able to attract social investment on their own.