Care-Connection Services as Youth Future Centers Expand Nationwide

A support access point is going nationwide

Youth Future Centers (청년미래센터) began pilot operations in four locations—Incheon, Ulsan, North Chungcheong Province, and North Jeolla Province—in 2024. The Korean government has confirmed plans to expand them across all 17 cities and provinces, with nationwide operations starting in September 2026. This means each metropolitan city and province will have an access point for young people caring for family members and young people experiencing social isolation or withdrawal.

On March 26, 2026, the Act on Support for Children and Young People in Crisis, Including Family Caregivers (가족돌봄 등 위기아동·청년 지원에 관한 법률) also came into force. Young people aged 34 or younger who provide nursing or day-to-day care for family members, as well as young people who have become disconnected from activities and relationships outside the home and need support, are now eligible for public support. People around them, including teachers and welfare-facility workers, can also request support on their behalf.

Among young people aged 13 to 34 selected for family-caregiver support, those who meet income and asset requirements can receive a self-care allowance. The threshold is 100% or below Korea’s standard median income, a national income benchmark based on household income rankings, and the support amount is KRW 2 million once in a lifetime. It is not unrestricted cash paid into a bank account, but a voucher for health recovery, self-development, and preparation for the future.

The centers’ work does not end with issuing this voucher. They connect ill family members to long-term care or daily living support, while linking young people to education, housing, employment, financial, and legal support. For young people experiencing isolation or withdrawal, they match support to the person’s condition, from counselling and activities that help restore daily routines to peer relationships and work experience.

More centers do not make every referral work automatically. In a pilot project reviewed by the National Assembly Budget Office, 48 of 56 positions were filled, while North Jeolla Province had eight staff members in 14 positions. Nationwide expansion broadens the entrance, but identifying young people who need help first and tracking progress across multiple institutions will still depend on people and operational tools.

So one young person does not have to repeat the same story

Consider a fictional case: Jimin, 24, works night shifts at a convenience store while managing her father’s meals, medication, and hospital visits. She keeps hospital appointments in her phone calendar, medication names in a notes app, and shift-swap requests in a chat room. When an appointment is suddenly scheduled, she has to update three places and explain the situation again to coworkers and family.

Even when she needs support, it is hard to know where to start and what to say. At the hospital, she explains her family member’s illness. At an Administrative Welfare Center, Korea’s local government welfare office, she explains her income and care situation again. At school or an employment center, she separately explains absences and work problems. Even if one institution refers her to another, Jimin must personally check whether the consultation was actually arranged.

The first service needed for nationwide expansion is not a huge counselling system. It is a tool where Jimin gives consent once, records her care schedule, school or work issues, and immediate needs, and a staff member sends her case to an appropriate local institution and confirms whether the referral was completed. Jimin only needs to see her next appointment and what to prepare. Staff members need to see statuses such as received, waiting, unable to contact, and referral completed.

Care schedules could change in the same place. Put hospital appointments and work shifts together, then add available transport support or a service that can take over care that day, and Jimin can see options before asking to swap a shift. If a referral is declined or there is no capacity, that should also be recorded so the next institution can be found.

Some work still belongs to people. A screen cannot listen to how burdensome Jimin finds family care, assess whether there is risk, or help adjust roles within the family. Staff must also build trust over time with a young person in withdrawal rather than pressuring them to reply.

That is why simply building a similar screen will be hard to sustain. What matters more is building relationships in which school counselling offices, hospitals, and Administrative Welfare Centers actually make referrals, and local care providers update available places and reasons for rejection. Records showing, within the scope of a person’s consent, which referrals led to completed consultations, continued study, or continued employment are also not easy to replicate.

The first likely customers for this kind of service are not the young people receiving help, but centers, local governments, schools, and hospitals. Overseas examples also often cover identification and referral costs through public budgets and grants rather than charging users. A model that reduces repeated institutional work and missed referrals is more realistic than charging subscription fees to vulnerable young people.

Overseas systems built the identification route first

Leeds Young Carers Support in the United Kingdom asks the school, health, or welfare institution that first identifies a young person to use a shared questionnaire. If the burden appears high, the person is referred to a worker at Family Action, a charity, which coordinates adult care services and school support for the family. The structure means young people and their families do not have to explain the same circumstances from the beginning at every institution.

Operating costs combine local government budgets for children’s and adult care with health budgets, and training for schools and frontline workers is free. The Local Government Association in the United Kingdom reported that wait times and repeated assessments fell after introducing a single referral route, but it did not disclose the exact number of days reduced. The difficult part to copy is not the questionnaire itself, but the relationships that enabled multiple institutions to agree to use the same process.

Young Carers in Schools in the United Kingdom narrows the place of identification to schools. Instead of requiring students who need help to search for welfare institutions themselves, it enables schools to notice first.

It is important to measure not only the number of people identified, but also changes in daily life, such as attendance.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s hikikomori support network in Japan does not require a person to visit a center immediately. It begins with telephone or email consultations, and if needed, a counsellor can visit the family or the person’s home up to five times at no cost. If meeting the person is difficult, the counsellor can speak with the family first.

In Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s official results for fiscal year 2023, there were 1,311 new telephone registrations, 252 new email registrations, and 16 new applications for home-visit consultations. In effect, the system separates a telephone and online entrance for many people from home-visit support that devotes substantial time to a smaller number. Rather than trying to visit every user immediately, it is more realistic to design different levels of contact: a reply, a phone call, family consultation, and a visit.

Four places to start

1. A referral inbox where progress is visible to the end

• What it does: A school, hospital, or Administrative Welfare Center briefly checks a young person’s care burden, sends a referral to a Youth Future Center, and confirms progress through completion of the consultation.
• Who uses it: A university counsellor who learns of family care while discussing a leave of absence or frequent absences, and a hospital social worker.
• Why now: People around the young person can now request support, and centers that can receive referrals are planned nationwide.
• First screen: Put “What the young person is missing most right now,” immediate risk, and the region for referral on one screen.

2. A calendar that connects care schedules with replacement support

• What it does: Brings together hospital, medication, meals, and work schedules, then suggests local care services for times that are too difficult to manage alone.
• Who uses it: A young person in their twenties who handles a family member’s hospital visits and daily care while working shifts.
• Why now: Youth Future Centers have begun linking a family’s long-term care and daily living support with the young person’s employment support.
• First screen: Show “care I need to provide” and “support that could take over” side by side on this week’s calendar.

3. Contact options before leaving the room

• What it does: Lets young people experiencing isolation or withdrawal choose the contact method they can manage first: text, phone, family consultation, or a visit.
• Who uses it: A young person who stopped contacting friends and stays in their room after taking leave from school, and a parent who seeks help first.
• Why now: Centers expanding nationwide will provide counselling and outreach support, but some people will still find a center visit itself difficult.
• First screen: Ask “What is possible today?” and offer buttons for “One text,” “Phone call with family only,” “Direct phone call,” and “Home-visit consultation.”

4. The next appointment after the self-care allowance

• What it does: Helps a young person choose the change they want to create with the self-care allowance, then connects them to counselling, study, and employment support after payment.
• Who uses it: A young person selected for family-caregiver support who is unsure how to use the voucher to improve daily life.
• Why now: KRW 2 million is paid only once in a lifetime, so the change in daily life and follow-up connections matter more than the spending itself.
• First screen: Ask the user to choose one change they want to keep after the support: sleep, health, study, work, or relationships.

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s nationwide center expansion, eligibility rules, voucher amount, and local government delivery structure are Korean conditions, not universal ones. In your own market, check who is allowed to make a referral, whether schools and hospitals share a route, and whether the referring institution can see whether help was completed. The transferable opportunity is not necessarily Korea’s policy design, but the operational gap between identifying a need and confirming that a real connection happened.

What to check today

Call your local Administrative Welfare Center or the Health and Welfare Call Center 129 and ask: when you identify a young family caregiver, where should you send them, what information should you send, and can the institution that made the referral confirm that the consultation was actually completed? If the answer is that staff must re-enter information by phone or email and cannot easily track progress, it may be worth testing a small version of a referral inbox where progress is visible to the end. If they already manage the process from intake through completion on one screen, it is better to consider another idea first.