Liverpool Advice Strategy
We believe that access to advice is a social determinant of health. It is fundamental that people should be able to seek advice and support to help them face the big issues that can happen in life. That's why we've been working to develop an advice strategy for Liverpool that puts access to advice front and centre in future development.
Liverpool Advice Strategy
As part of our campaign to improve capacity and access to free legal advice for people in Liverpool, we have been working with Liverpool City Council to develop a Liverpool Advice Strategy.
The principles for the strategy are that a universal, joined up system of trusted gateway and advice providers will deliver the types and levels of advice needed to reach people with particular legal needs and hard-to-serve populations. Collaboration is key to local advice services provision, so that wherever people are when they realise they have a problem that advice could help, or wherever they go to get support, a door opens up to all the services available in the advice network – No Wrong Door. These recommendations also recognise that we should aim to provide Advice for All, but that demand for free legal advice currently far outstrips supply.
Co-designed by the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Access to Advice Network members in late 2022, our Liverpool Advice Strategy sets out a framework and guiding principles for the development of a robust cross-sector advice strategy that works towards a well-funded, connected and valued sector that can respond to residents’ need for advice.
Key recommendations include:
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Develop a long-term network funding strategy to increase advice provision in Liverpool.
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Organisational collaboration to maximise advice capacity.
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Identify and fund independent advice in all new Council strategies and projects
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Nominate a key Council directorate with responsibility for ensuring appropriate independent advice is provided across its work programme
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Consult the advice network at an early stage of programme design
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Consult Liverpool Access to Advice Network and its members on an annual basis, using our evidence base of advice needs.
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Implement a secure, digital. combined advice directory and referral system.
NO WRONG
DOOR.
ADVICE FOR
ALL.
Our strategy sets out the context for the development of a cross-sector strategy, including highlighting the limited advice that is available, the loss of funding/resources that the sector has undergone, and the value of advice to the public purse.
“At present there are a diverse number of organisations involved in a person’s journey to getting advice, but there are a very limited number of places to get legal advice. (Source: Organ, et al. 2020). This advice ecosystem is limited, fragile and complex.”
“The seemingly high number of organisations that are stakeholders in the free legal advice sector must be set in the context of a sector that has suffered severe funding cuts in recent years, and where the majority of organisations act only as a gateway to the limited legal advice services that remain.”
“There is very little remaining of specialist casework for the more complex situations in all areas of social welfare law. (Source: Organ, et al. 2020; EHRC, 2018).”
“The advice sector provides significant social and economic benefit to Liverpool’s communities and residents; for example, reducing health inequalities, keeping people in work and saving the public purse an estimated £8,000 per year for each client that receives specialist advice (Leckie, Munro and Pragnell; Pragmatix, 2021).”
Our Liverpool Advice Strategy identifies collaboration, a unified joined up system of advice providers and gateway organisations, and recognition and investment of the local authority as key to the development of a well-functioning (because well-funded and effective) advice sector.