University of Limerick research highlights need for coordinated youth support systems

New UL research highlights ‘No Wrong Door’ model as key to keeping vulnerable young people out of justice system. Dean Matterson (HEA), Dr Sean Redmond (UL), Aisling Reidy (UL), Dr Catherine Naughton (UL), Professor Lucy Ann Buckley (UL), and Dr Christina Morin (UL).

A new study from UL research highlights the need for more coordinated services for young people with complex needs

A new study from UL research highlights the need for more coordinated services for young people with complex needs, warning that fragmented support systems can leave vulnerable young people falling through the gaps and at greater risk of significant involvement in the youth justice system.

The review, led by the Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes and Practice (REPPP) team in the School of Law at UL, provides the first detailed conceptual framing of the ‘No Wrong Door’ principle as it applies to collaborative service delivery in Ireland.

The findings directly support Ireland’s Youth Justice Strategy 2021–2027 and its commitment to identifying best practice models of collaborative service delivery based on the ‘No Wrong Door’ principle, which holds that when a young person or family first engages with any service, they should be able to access clear pathways to all the supports they need.

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Young people with complex needs often require support from a wide range of services, including mental health, disability, education, social care, addiction, family support, and justice-related agencies. However, when these services operate in silos, young people can face multiple barriers to access, repeated assessments, exclusionary criteria, and disconnected referral pathways.

The new study identifies a clear pattern in which complex needs intersect with equally complex service structures, leading to unintentional exclusion, poor service uptake, and limited outcomes.

This can have profound consequences, increasing the likelihood that vulnerable young people become more deeply involved in the youth justice system.

Importantly, the review also highlights how other jurisdictions have responded to similar challenges. In some cases, services have been restructured to simplify access and reduce duplication. In others, referral pathways have been redesigned so young people only need to tell their story once, reducing retraumatisation and service fatigue.

“We typically hear about young people who are hard to reach or whose needs are so complex that it takes a huge amount of scarce state resources to barely engage them,” explained Dr Seán Redmond, Adjunct Professor of Youth Justice and Director of REPPP at UL.

“What we hear less of is the other side of the complexity coin, the rigid and sometimes unwelcoming experience reported by some of the most vulnerable young people, of trying unsuccessfully to access services.  

“No Wrong Door: A Systematic Review, deliberately steps into this policy space examining the circumstances of young people pushed to the margins and sharing what the international research can tell us about better ways to get the right help at the right time that young people need and deserve.”

The review also identifies the value of ‘warm referral’ approaches, where practitioners actively connect young people to the next service rather than relying on passive signposting. Under this model, every service contact point acts as an open door that remains accessible whenever the young person returns.

Lead Researcher Aisling Reidy said: “When conducting this research, I wanted to better understand how we can improve young people’s engagement with services and their experience of accessing support, particularly for those with complex needs.  

“Drawing on international evidence, this report examines how a ‘No Wrong Door’ approach can help services become more joined up and easier to navigate, creating a connected and smoother journey between supports for young people.  

“This report is a review of national and international literature and forms part of my PhD study, which examines young people’s lived experiences of services and how these experiences align with service expectations under a No Wrong Door approach.”

The research concludes that streamlining and coordinating service pathways is essential to improving outcomes for young people with complex needs.

By providing conceptual clarity at the policy level, the findings offer an important foundation for strengthening collaborative practice across Ireland’s youth justice, social care, health, and education sectors.

The research is expected to contribute to the development of more effective cross-sector models that ensure every service entry point is the right one for vulnerable young people and their families.

The study was funded by the Higher Education Authority as part of the North South Research Programme.