Youth Integration Project (YIP)

YIP was developed to understand and address the real-world barriers preventing young people from receiving timely, coordinated and appropriate mental health care across services.

The challenge

Young people with mental ill health often need support from multiple services across primary, secondary and specialist care. Yet these services frequently operate in silos, making it difficult to access the right care at the right time.

Our approach

Combined a review of integrated care evidence with extensive consultation and journey mapping involving young people, parents and carers, headspace staff, clinicians and service providers. This led to the development of the YIP framework, an evidence-based model for strengthening integration across five core domains: service delivery; workforce; information systems and communication; financing; and leadership, governance, policy and values. Also led to the development of the Rating of Integrated Health Services (RIHS) tool.

Key goals

• Understand the structural and service-level barriers to integrated youth mental health care.

• Develop an evidence-based framework for strengthening service integration.

• Measure current levels of integration between headspace and specialist services.

• Identify priority areas and practical strategies for improving coordination across the system.

• Inform the design of scalable tools and models to support system reform.

Evaluation & impact

YIP found that most specialist services and programs in NSW had only minimal to basic levels of integration with headspace centres, and none met criteria for fully integrated care. The project identified three priority areas for improvement, plus practical implementation strategies.