The Legal Problems and Mental Health Needs of Youth Advice Service Users: The Case for Advice

Research published by Youth Access, the youth advice and counselling charity, reveals the health savings that could be achieved by ensuring vulnerable people are able to access early advice to resolve their social problems. The charity believes that the combination of welfare reforms and rising homelessness could over-burden NHS budgets unless massive cuts to voluntary sector advice services are reversed.

The research, conducted by the UK’s top legal academics, indicates that a young person with a social welfare problem relating to housing or money has typically already cost local health services, housing services and social services around £13,000 before finding their way to an advice service. This expenditure could be avoided by ensuring earlier access to advice. A typical advice intervention in a youth advice setting costs under £100, after which seventy per cent of young people report improvements in their mental and/or physical health. The analysis indicates that the resulting savings in GP costs alone are likely to exceed the cost of the advice intervention.

Previous research by Youth Access has shown that

• over a million young people each year fail to get any advice for their social welfare problems, often because age-appropriate advice services are not available, costing the taxpayer £1 billion in avoidable expenditure on public services
• three-quarters of a million young adults aged 16-24 become mentally or physically ill each year because of stress from unemployment-related problems at a cost to the NHS of at least £250m a year

The new study found particularly strong links between young people’s social welfare problems and mental ill-health. Around two-thirds of young people presenting at youth advice agencies for help with housing, benefit and employment problems had scores on a standardised mental health scale that met or exceeded common cut-off points for cases of mental illness. Forty-five per cent had experienced problems with their mental or physical health as a direct result of their social welfare problems, with many making avoidable visits to their GP.

Barbara Rayment, Director of Youth Access, says: “Failing to address rising social welfare problems could cripple NHS and social care budgets. The research indicates that youth advice services are ‘clearly cost-effective’, even when viewed only in terms of their impact on mental health.”

Youth Access has charted a relentless rise in mental health and social welfare needs amongst young people over recent years, coinciding with a dramatic fall in the level of funding available to youth advice and counselling services. The forthcoming implementation of Universal Credit and other welfare reforms are predicted to lead to a further surge in demand.

Eleanor Clarke, manager of the Youth Advice Centre in Brighton and Hove, one of the agencies that took part in the research, says: “We have seen a three-fold increase in the number of young people presenting with housing, money and mental health problems in the past year alone. Local services for young people have experienced deep cuts and our resources are increasingly stretched. We are deeply concerned about our capacity to meet young people’s needs in the future as welfare benefit changes impact on our clients.”

Youth Access is calling for investment in advice service models that are proven to be effective for young people. Barbara Rayment says: “With local authorities and the NHS being forced to find huge savings in their budgets, the only viable solution is for local planners and commissioners to come together across youth, public health, housing and social care boundaries to reconfigure poorly performing statutory services and jointly commission the early intervention advice, counselling and support services vulnerable young people need. If they don’t, it will cost them – and the taxpayer – far more in the long term.”

For a copy of the full report, see The Legal Problems and Mental Health Needs of Youth Advice Service Users: The Case for Advice