The Alcohol and Drug Foundation, in partnership with Sir David Martin Foundation, has completed a comprehensive mapping of youth alcohol and other drug (AOD) services across Australia.
The findings reveal both encouraging progress and critical gaps that directly impact young people’s access to life-saving support.
While the mapping shows notable strengths, it also revealed key obstacles preventing young people from accessing the specialist support they need, pointing to urgent opportunities for system improvement:
- Specialised Clinical Services: Only 31 programs offer youth-specific withdrawal and detox services, indicating an opportunity to expand specialised clinical support.
- Family Engagement: While 99 programs include family support, expanding this proven approach could significantly improve treatment outcomes, particularly given the strong evidence for family involvement in youth recovery.
- Cultural Responsiveness: With 97 programs offering culturally appropriate support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, there’s scope to better address the specific needs of First Nations young people and families.
- Service Navigation: Inconsistent age definitions across programs (ranging from 0+ to specific brackets like 16-28 years, with 12-25 being most common) creates confusion for families seeking appropriate support. Standardising these definitions could improve access.
- Service Visibility: The complexity of the service landscape means some programs offering multiple services may not appear in relevant searches, presenting an opportunity to improve how services are categorised and promoted.
Overall this project highlighted some key areas where gains can be made:
- Understanding how young people and their families go about searching for information on youth AOD services
- Creating improved user-friendly tools that help families and young people navigate the complex service landscape and enable them to connect with appropriate specialist support
- Using this evidence base to inform our funding decisions, prioritising investment in proven youth-specialist programs and addressing critical service gaps aligned to our mission
- Building stronger connections and collaborations within the sector by sharing insights from this mapping with service providers and peak bodies
Ultimately this important work can also support initiatives to influence national youth AOD policy, including increased funding of specialist programs and addressing the geographic inequities that leave some communities underserved.
Making data-driven change
This mapping project represents more than statistics – it’s about ensuring that when a young person or family reaches out for help, they can access appropriate, youth-focused support. Every data point represents a potential pathway to recovery, and this comprehensive evidence base positions the Foundation to achieve our strategic aspirations over the next five years.
Through your continued support, Sir David Martin Foundation is leveraging this evidence to become a shining light to provide youth AOD service intelligence, so that more young Australians can find and access the specialist support they need to build healthy, fulfilling lives.
This analysis is based on the comprehensive Youth AOD Services mapping project completed in partnership with the Alcohol and Drug Foundation in May 2025 utilising the Path2Help database.
Thank you to our partner:
