Working Together for Advice Project

The Law Centres Federation is a member of consortium of legal and advice networks set up to provide a range of support services to independent advice centres in England. The Advice Services Alliance (ASA), the umbrella body for all the networks was awarded £5,714,742 by the Big Lottery Fund (over three years) under the first phase of its Advice Plus programme in January 2008. The funding is for three years and will deliver a multiple strand project that will provide a range of support services to independent advice centres in England.

Other members of the consortium are ASA, AdviceUK, Age Concern England, Citizens Advice and Youth Access.

Services provided under the project are delivered through eight workstreams:

Developing access to advice
Looking at ways of improving the accessibility of advice services to those with greatest need. This will include models of service delivery or good practice and focusing on how to improve clients’ initial contact with advice services.
More information: Developing Access To Advice.doc
Link: Developing Access to Advice Workstream

User and stakeholder involvement
Innvestigating how to increase user and stakeholder involvement in the management and development of advice services by identifying best practice through research, development of a toolkit and delivering appropriate training.
Link: User and Stakeholder Involvement Workstream

Enhancing frontline advice
Delivering direct support for the setting up of sustainable partnerships and advice forums and establishing new advice centres and Law Centres.
Enhancing Frontline Advice
Link: Enhancing Frontline Advice Workstream. Materials produced include Local Area Agreement Toolkit October 2009.pdf

Quality of Advice
Developing a national scheme for accrediting agencies providing advice services at the current General Help Quality Mark level.
Link: Quality of Advice Workstream

Advice outcomes
Helping advice agencies to define, measure and evaluate the outcomes of advice work and so enable the sector to better demonstrate the value of its work.
Link: Advice Outcomes Workstream

Developing discrimination advice
Delivering a discrimination advice training programme and establishing referral networks and protocols to develop links, partnerships and referral agreements between agencies.
Strategy Papers;
Referral Networks: Strategy Paper 1 Referral Networks.pdf
Training and Learning: Strategy Paper 2 Training and learning.pdf
Link: Developing Discrimination Advice Workstream

Workforce development and training
Enabling the sector to attract and retain staff and volunteers by accrediting trainers and developing a qualifications and accreditation framework.
Workforce_Development_Findings.doc
Link: Workforce Development Workstream

Promoting advice
Establishing an annual England-wide celebration and promotion of advice services; building the capacity of advice agencies to promote their services to target groups; creating generic promotion materials; and promoting the benefits and outcomes of advice work to funders and other stakeholders.
Link: Promoting Advice Workstream.

Resources: Advice Week Resources 2009.pdf and publicity: Avoid crisis get advice.doc

This funding has enhanced the ability of the Law Centres Federation and partners to support and develop Law Centres. 

Link to WTFA News