How do youth early help hubs work to support care-leavers’ mental health and wellbeing? A Realist evaluation.

Introduction: This study applies a Realist Evaluation to explore how youth early help hubs support the holistic wellbeing and mental health of care leavers. Young people leaving care are known to face heightened vulnerabilities to mental health problems and barriers to accessing support (Phillips et al, 2023). Meanwhile Youth Information Advice and Counselling Services have emerged as early support hubs that offer a more flexible and youth centred model of provision based in the community. This research set out to examine the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes at play within these services, in order to develop an overarching programme theory that explains how they work, for whom, and in what circumstances.

 

Methods: The programme theory was initially developed through a realist literature review, drawing together existing evidence on care-experienced young people’s needs and the potential of early support services. This initial theory was then tested and refined against empirical research.

 Data collection involved case studies with two early help hubs, realist interviews with practitioners, creative participatory methods with care-experienced young people, and expert consultation with stakeholders. This combination of approaches ensured that the perspectives of both professionals and young people were central to the analysis, while grounding the findings in real world practice.

 

Findings: The study demonstrates that early help hubs provide a distinctive form of support for care leavers. Young people reported improved access to services, strengthened protective factors through the development of trusted adult relationships, greater community integration and connectedness, and positive identity development.

The mechanisms driving these outcomes included the voluntary and non stigmatizing nature of early help hubs which allowed young people to engage on their own terms. Young people felt validated and understood, rather than experiencing judgment or perceived stigma. Young people were able to access help without needing to meet a clinical threshold. These relational and structural features created a safe, inclusive environment.

 

Discussion: At a systemic level, this evaluation highlights the importance of a supportive policy context, collaborative interagency working, and the co-location of holistic services. Services were most effective when delivered by a diverse and representative staff team, within settings that were explicitly non clinical and welcoming.

 

Conclusion: Taken together, these conditions enabled early help hubs to provide accessible and meaningful support that addressed the intersecting needs of care-experienced young people. Finally, the research emphasises the importance of involving young people in service design and development. Co-production ensures that services are responsive to their needs of young people and enhances a sense of agency and ownership. The resulting programme theory contributes to a deeper understanding of how early help hubs can create enabling contexts that foster wellbeing, resilience, and belonging for care leavers.

 

 

This research contributes to Theme 1 by showing how integrated, voluntary sector and community based hubs can reduce reliance on clinical services while promoting holistic wellbeing. Embedding such approaches within wider systems of integrated care offers significant potential to improve health equity and ensure services reflect the diversity and lived experience of those they aim to serve.