Back for the future: a client centred analysis of social welfare and family law provision

Abstract

The landscape of legal advice provision is entering a period of significant change in England and Wales. Whilst there is a great deal of uncertainty about how the future landscape of advice service provision will evolve, there are lessons to be drawn from past delivery models.

This article first looks back at the period following the Access to Justice Act 1999, setting out a range of delivery models initiated following the Act, as well as research and evaluation conducted in the millennium decade. Findings are then presented from a comprehensive qualitative study on how people experience and deal with social welfare and family problems, and on facilitators and barriers to integrated advice provision, including inter-organisational working. This is explored through the lens of a delivery model which emphasised partnership and the pooling of resources and specialisms to meet client needs: the Community Legal Advice Centre model.

Keywords:

• Access to justice
• legal advice
• integrated services
• seamlessness
• Community Legal Advice Centre
• social welfare law

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Judith Sidaway and Lesley Scanlan for their work on this project. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Ashish Patel and Catrina Denvir to the success of the project fieldwork.

Notes

1. Debt, employment, welfare benefits, housing and community care.

2. The LSC is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, brought into being under the Access to Justice Act 1999 and thereby replacing the Legal Aid Board. The LSC will in turn be replaced by the Legal Aid Agency in April 2013, becoming an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Justice.

3. The Advice Services Transition Fund, a big Lottery Fund programme, will provide funding in 2013/14 and in 2014/15 to help not-for-profit advice organisations in England to adapt and develop new ways to meet local needs. The Cabinet Office will contribute £35m to the overall £65m budget.

4. There is no universally accepted definition of generalist advice, though it usually refers to basic or initial, often one-off, advice, provided by advisors who do not specialise in a particular area of law. Broadly speaking, specialist legal advice includes taking action on behalf of clients in order to move the case on, with the advisor taking responsibility for further action. This may include negotiation with third parties and liaising with third parties on behalf of the client, either by telephone, in writing, or face-to-face. It can also include the use of experts and interpreters, where appropriate. Specialist advisors should be able to provide complex legal advice in specific areas of law, including representation in legal proceedings.

5. For reasons of confidentiality and anonymity of research participants, the CLACs in which fieldwork took place are not named in this paper. However, they encompassed the range of provider type, the variation in subcontracting arrangements for the different tiers of service delivery, the length of time the services had been open and a range of contract values and volumes.

6. Three clients were not invited for second interviews because they were regarded by researchers as particularly vulnerable and unable to give fully informed consent. Three clients did not wish to participate in the second interview. There were no second depth interviews conducted with a further six clients although they were scheduled. One client could not attend because of illness, the interview of a second client was suspended because the interviewers felt that the client was no longer able to provide informed consent (this client had mental health problems), and in a further four cases the clients did not arrive at the scheduled interview time and could not be traced for rescheduling.

7. Of the 30 clients who experienced more than one problem, 17 had two problems, 10 experienced three problems, and the remaining three clients had four identified problems.