A qualitative investigation of young people’s experiences and views of Early Support Hubs across England

Lily Wright, Jessica L Griffiths, Rebecca Appleton, Sadiya Begum, Connor Clarke, Nima Cas Hunt, Hannah Kate Lewis, Phoebe Barnett, Anam Bhutta, Eva Driskell, Julian Edbrooke-Childs, Andrew Grundy, Isabel Hanson, Emma Maynard, Lizzie Mitchell, Rob Saunders, Polly Waite, Brynmor Lloyd-Evans, Kylee Trevillion and Sonia Johnson

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 5, 1-21

Abstract: Background: Youth is a period of elevated risk for mental ill health, yet young people often do not receive timely support. Barriers can include high clinical thresholds for treatment and long waiting lists, as overstretched statutory services can struggle to meet high demand. The Early Support Hubs available in some parts of England are a potentially promising model to increase access to support. These are community-based services offering open-access, holistic support for 11–25-year-olds without a referral. However, there is no standardised model and considerable variation in the support offered, highlighting the need for research to explore how Early Support Hubs operate, whether they are meeting the mental health and wellbeing needs of young people, and potential areas for improvement. Aims: To explore young people’s experiences of using Early Support Hubs for mental health or wellbeing support, and their views on best practice within these services. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 demographically diverse young people aged 16–25 years who had used eight Early Support Hub services across England. Data were analysed using codebook thematic analysis. Results: Aspects of hubs that were valued by young people included: easy accessibility; holistic approaches which go beyond clinical interventions; a sense of community, friendship and consistency; and youth-led philosophies. Limitations of the hub model included them being little known in local areas, lack of capacity to address more acute and complex mental health needs, and the limited scale of the services. Conclusion: Early Support Hubs appear to be valued by young people and have potential to be an adjunct to clinical services to help increase access to mental health support for young people. Evidence on populations served, what support they receive, and outcomes following support are needed to assess whether there is a policy case for wider roll out.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0347789 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 47789&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0347789

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0347789

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().