// case study · referral platform
Forty organisations, one system, youth tell their story once.
United4Youth connects foster and at-risk young people with housing, work, education, and support across roughly 40 partner organisations. We built one platform that ended repeated intakes and made every referral visible and accountable.
nonprofit · foster youth servicessan diego, usa~40 partner organisations
// key figures
40
partner orgs on one shared system
10 weeks
from signed proposal to live launch
3-in-1
youth portal, partner dashboard & admin
// the problem
The support existed. The system connecting it didn't.
Forty organisations were trying to support the same young people, aged 18 to 26 and many of them aging out of foster care, with no shared system between them. Accountability depended on memory, and youth carried the burden of coordination themselves.
For a population that already distrusts institutional systems, every repeated intake and every referral that disappeared into silence was another reason to stop asking for help.
Where it broke down
Repeated intake at every door. A young person retold their full story to each organisation they approached, with nothing carried across.
Referrals sent through Microsoft Forms. Partners referred youth to each other with no shared record, so a referral could sit unopened and nobody found out.
No status visibility. Once details left a case worker, there was no way to see whether the referral had been picked up or dropped.
Resources nobody could find. Support options lived in scattered PDFs, word of mouth, and individual case workers' own knowledge.
// the solution
One platform, three connected interfaces, built on a single rule: tell your story once.
Kaizen Hub designed and built a Youth Portal, a Partner Dashboard, and an Admin panel for United4Youth staff. A young person completes one universal intake profile, and every referral, support request, and partner interaction draws from it. No repeated forms. No starting from zero at each organisation.
before
A full intake at every organisation
Referrals by Microsoft Forms
No shared record, no status
Resources in scattered PDFs
after
One universal intake profile
Referrals tracked in-platform
Shared timeline with a 24/48-hour SLA
Searchable directory across 8 categories
// what we built
Everything a referral needs, in one place.
One guided intake profile, completed once and reused across every referral and support request
Searchable resource directory spanning housing, employment, education, transport, financial education, wellness, legal, and emergency help
Request Support turns a stated need into a tracked referral with a visible status timeline
AI triage assistant that guides youth to the right category through structured questions, with controlled routing and guardrails
Live referral queue with a full status lifecycle, so referrals stop vanishing into inboxes
24/48-hour SLA indicators on every referral, with automatic email escalation when a partner does not respond
Partner-to-partner referrals inside the platform, replacing the Microsoft Forms workflow entirely
12-domain outcome assessment completed at referral close, so progress is measured rather than assumed
// how the platform works
Six moving parts, one shared record.
01
Youth intake
One universal profile with full parity to the existing case management fields. Told once, used everywhere.
02
Resource directory
Eight categories of support, searchable, built mobile-first for phones on limited data.
03
AI triage
Structured questioning routes a young person to the right category and the right resources.
04
Referral queue
Status lifecycle, case notes, and acknowledgement timers with automatic escalation.
05
Crossroads
A moderated community space with discussion threads, partner announcements, and events.
06
Admin & security
User management, referral monitoring, moderation, and reporting, on encrypted role-based foundations.
Security matched the population served: PII encrypted at rest, row-level data security, role-based access, California compliance (WIC §827, CMIA) and WCAG AA accessibility built in from day one, not retrofitted.
// how we delivered it
Signed proposal to launch in 10 weeks.
Architecture and requirements, core development, AI integration, QA, and deployment, with United4Youth running structured user acceptance testing across all three roles before go-live.
The scope grew during the build. Full intake parity with the client's existing case management fields, partner-to-partner referrals, and outcome assessments all moved into the MVP instead of a later phase. The timeline didn't move.
// outcomes
Delivered on a short timeline, and beyond the agreed scope.
A story told once
A single universal intake profile follows the young person, so nobody restarts from zero at the next organisation.
Referrals that cannot go quiet
Every referral carries an acknowledgement window. Miss 24 hours and the platform escalates by email on its own.
Forty partners, one shared record
Partner-to-partner referrals moved off untracked forms and onto a shared system with a full case timeline.
Outcomes actually measured
A 12-domain baseline and progression assessment is completed at every case close, so progress is evidence, not anecdote.
Shipped beyond scope, on time
Intake parity, partner-to-partner referrals, and outcome assessments moved into the MVP mid-build. The 10-week timeline held.
Live and rolling out
The platform is in active use across the partner network, with our team supporting adoption as it grows.
// start here
Coordinating services across teams that don't share a system?
If the coordination runs on forms, email threads, and memory, this is the kind of system we build.