Evaluating a youth-centred health and wellbeing service for City & Hackney (2026)
Health Spot City & Hackney is an integrated, youth-centred health and wellbeing model. It brings GPs, mental health and sexual health services, and youth workers together to support young people aged 11–25.
Fiveways was commissioned to independently evaluate the first year of the pilot, capturing the perspectives of young people, frontline providers and the wider health and care system to build the evidence base for its future and potential roll-out.
“Fiveways exceeded our expectations, providing the strategic evidence base necessary to secure the future of Health Spot City & Hackney. The team’s relational approach built the trust needed to gather authentic insight from a genuinely underserved audience. The result is an evaluation of exceptional depth that has become our primary “evidence-of-impact” paper, helping us shift the conversation with decision-makers from a pilot project to a proven model.”
Our evaluation included
Young people can be a tricky audience to research, especially when talking about their own health. Capturing honest insight meant going beyond a survey: Fiveways co-produced the approach with the Health Spot Youth Steering Board and built trust through repeated, in-person contact, including on-site “intercept” interviews at the youth hub. This sat alongside surveys, follow-up interviews, and research with providers and system partners, with the methodology evolving as the service launched and the landscape shifted.
Our evaluation revealed
We found the pilot had largely achieved its objectives, with particularly strong results on access, engagement and experience of care. 77% of young people agreed Health Spot had been designed with someone like them in mind, and 90% felt it created a genuinely youth-friendly, non-stigmatising environment where they felt comfortable seeking help. Alongside this strong evidence base, the evaluation identified clear, practical recommendations to strengthen follow-up, integration and long-term sustainability as the service matures and scales.