Evidence submitted by Citizens Advice,
Child Poverty Action Group and London Advice Services
By statute, the LSC is committed to developing
a Community Legal Service (Access to Justice Act 2000) intended
to ensure "that every community has access to a comprehensive
network of legal service providers of consistently good quality".
The CLS extends to all services holding the LSC quality mark,
but was established to provide a "seamless service"
from basic advice through to specialist help—in other words
the CLS is predominantly a network of generalist agencies which
may access more specialist services for eligible (legally aided)
clients.
Specialist support enables frontline advisers
to see more clients because they can spend less time on complex
cases with specialist assistance, as well as recognising cases
without merit and not taking them forward unnecessarily.
Specialist support is a highly successful and
much-needed scheme. It increases access to high quality advice
and represents value for money. There is a demand for this service
by front-line advisers and it adds significant value to the advice
giving process. We believe that the Government should press the
LSC to reconsider their decision to withdraw specialist support
funding.
Specialist support provides expert help in all
areas of social welfare law to front-line advisers in Citizens
Advice bureaux, solicitors' firms, law centres, and advice agencies.
It gives advice on complex one-off queries, and provides support
with casework and training.
The LSC have decided to terminate all specialist
support contracts contrary to its corporate priorities and its
proposals for the Community Legal Service to:
— ensure clients have access to quality
services—specialist support enables and ensures that the
client has access to the highest quality of advice;
— ensure a more holistic approach to
advice—the specialist support enables front-line services
to provide a more holistic service giving access to advice on
complex issues across several areas of law which would not otherwise
be available to the client; and
— focus on categories of law that have
the greatest impact upon those who face poverty, disadvantage
or exclusion—these are the areas covered by the SSP.
The decision is also contrary to the LSC's own
evidence. In its 2004 evaluation of specialist support the LSC
stated that the scheme provides access to quality advice services.
In line with DCA targets it was found to provide quick, early
and accessible information for vulnerable and socially excluded
individuals. The LSC's evaluation accepted that specialist support
services achieve this at an acceptable cost, utilising economies
of scale while not compromising on quality. In this context the
decision to withdraw all funding from July 2006 is very surprising.
In addition, the LSC's report on specialist support to Fundamental
Legal Aid Review stated there is a need for specialist support
and highlighted that demand will rise.
QUESTIONS RELATING
TO THE
LSC DECISION TO
TERMINATE SPECIALIST
SUPPORT CONTRACTS
AS OF
JULY 2006
Consultation and the Decision-Making Process
— What materials were before the commissioners
when they reached their decision, in particular were the consultation
paper and responses and the top-slice report before them?
— What evidence is there that specialist
support is no longer needed and what analysis have you done on
the likely effects of your decision to cut specialist support?
— Do you agree that the more than 8
of the 19 contract holding organisations would have responded
to the consultation if it had been made clear that the total withdrawal
of funding was a possible outcome?
— Why did the LSC decide not to consult
the Law Society, the Bar Council, or any of the frontline organisations
which depend on specialist support before making its decision?
— Beyond the 19 contract holding organisations
did which organisations/individuals did the LSC consult before
making the decision?
— How far through the decision making
process was the LSC when the consultation was issued?
Consequences of the LSC's Decision
— Where are people who got expert help
in the past through accessing specialist support going to get
expert help once specialist support has gone?
— What account have you made of the
large amount of time front-line advisers save by using specialist
support, as evidenced in the Pilot Evaluation Report at paragraph
2.24?
— Surely the important thing is for
a member of the public to get the correct advice, rather then
just having access to advice per se. Are the LSC not prioritising
quantity over quality by directing money at front-line services
whilst withdrawing access to the expertise to deal with the most
difficult cases?
— One specialist support provider recently
took a call from a local CAB in need of urgent specialist debt
advice relating to a client who had turned up with a warrant for
committal to prison for seven days for failing to attend court
in a debt case. The advice was needed instantly and no-one in
the bureau had any idea of what to do. Is that kind of instant
specialist advice going to be available to front line staff after
the specialist support service has ended and if so how?
— One of the assertions made by the
LSC has been that agencies with a Specialist Quality Mark should
not need specialist support, as they are "specialists".
Does that also apply to organisations with a General Help With
Casework Quality Mark which increasingly access the service?
— Has the LSC compared the likely "outcomes"
of a client accessing legal advice that has a second tier support
service, to one that has not?
The Role of the LSC
— How does your decision fit with your
first corporate priority, as set out in your Corporate Plan, of
ensuring your clients have access to quality services?
— With the current model, advice workers
and solicitors have access to the best practitioners in the various
fields of law all year round for advice and training. How do you
propose to improve on this model?
— Was it not precipitous to terminate
the specialist support contracts while the broader review of the
proposed reforms to the CLS was still ongoing?
— Is it not a huge waste of public
money to pilot a scheme for three years, carry out a thorough
evaluation and award three year contracts based on that evaluation
and then cut the service?
— What has changed since those contracts
were awarded?
— Are you expecting front-line advisers
and solicitors to acquire the same level of knowledge as attained
by legal professionals and organisations like Shelter, CPAG and
JCWI?
— Is the LSC aware that CLS Direct
themselves use specialist support—indicating the need for
specialist support?
— If the LSC's model of CLACs and CLANs
is to work, there must be a period of transition between the current
system and the new models. Is there not a potential role for a
specialist support service during this transition?
— You state in Appendix 2 to the Top
Slice Review that "If there is a need for specialist support,
we must revisit what we are purchasing at a specialist level and
investigate why the gap in expertise exists". Would it not
therefore have been sensible to have investigated this before
cutting specialist support and creating an even bigger gap in
access expertise?
Citizens Advice, Child Poverty Action Group and London
Advice Services
February 2006
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