Written evidence from Youth Access (AJ
36)
1.1 Youth Access welcomes the Justice Committee's
inquiry into Access to Justice.
1.2 This submission aims to give the Committee
an overview of the likely impact of the proposed changes on young
people's access to justice.
1.3 We conclude that:
The current legal aid system fails to meet young
people's needs. Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS) data indicates
that young people have very high levels of need in the core areas
of social welfare law (housing, benefits, debt), yet are far less
likely to get advice under current arrangements than other age
groups.
However, the proposals restricting the scope of Legal
Aid to exclude the bulk of social welfare law cases will lead
to an increased number of people from all categories of vulnerable
clients (including young people) being denied access to justice.
This will lead to far higher costs to other public services in
the longer term.
The proposals must be viewed in the context of other
advice and support services for young people (including Connexions
and VCS youth advice agencies) being severely cut back by other
central and local government cuts.
We are extremely concerned at the proposals to shift
resources away from face to face services and towards a Single
Gateway telephone service. The evidence suggests that this will
have a disproportionately detrimental impact on certain vulnerable
groups, not least young people. CSJS evidence indicates that young
people are far more reliant on face to face services than other
age groups and are less likely to get advice through the telephone
or online.
There is a strong case for targeting legal aid investment
where it can have the greatest impact. We believe this should
involve reconfiguring services to be more client-centred and targeting
services better at those client groups for whom getting advice
has the greatest beneficial impact.
Civil justice problems have a disproportionate adverse
impact on young people; whilst getting advice has a disproportionately
beneficial effect on this client group. This evidence points to
potential economic benefits from targeting legal aid far better
at young people.
2. ABOUT YOUTH
ACCESS
2.1 Youth Access is the national membership association
for a UK-wide network of over 200 agencies providing information,
advice, counselling and support services to young people.
2.2 Youth Access is a full member of Advice Services
Alliance.
2.3 Youth Access is recognised as the key representative
body for youth advice services and is widely acknowledged as being
the leading expert in young people's needs for advice.
2.4 Youth Access believes that all young people
have the right to access high quality information, advice and
counselling services wherever they may live in the UK and promotes
good practice through training, publications, quality standards,
information, advice and consultancy.
2.5 Over recent years we have worked with the
Legal Services Research Centre, amongst others, to develop a comprehensive
evidence base on young people's needs for legal advice, the impact
of social welfare problems on young people, young people's advice-seeking
behaviour, barriers to access to advice services and the impact
of advice received by young people.
2.6 This work has resulted in the publication
of a series of influential reports, including:
Young People's Access to Advice—The Evidence,
Kenrick, J, Youth Access, 2009.
The Advice Needs of Young People—The Evidence,
Kenrick, J, Youth Access, 2009.
With Rights in Mind: is there a role for social welfare
advice in improving young people's mental health, Sefton, M, Youth
Access, 2010.
The Youth Advice Workforce, Youth Access, 2009.
The impact of the recession on young people and on
their needs for advice and counselling services, Youth Access,
2009.
Under Strain: how the recession is affecting young
people and the organisations which provide advice, counselling
and support to them, Youth Access, 2010.
Rights Within Reach: developing effective outreach
legal advice services in youth settings, Verma, P and Wilkins,
M, Youth Access/Law Centres federation, 2009.
Young People's Social Welfare Needs and the Impact
of Good Advice: Issues Paper, Youth Access, 2007.
Locked Out: Young people's housing and homelessness
needs and the impact of good advice, Kenrick, J, Youth Access,
2007.
Young People and Civil Justice: Findings from the
2004 English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey, Balmer,
N J, Pleasence, P and Tam, T, Youth Access, 2007.
Rights to Access: meeting young people's needs for
advice, Kenrick, J, 2002.
2.7 Summary briefing versions of the first two
reports listed above are attached to this submission as supplementary
material.
3. WHAT ARE
THE IMPLICATIONS
OF THE
GOVERNMENT'S
PROPOSALS?
The failure of the current legal aid system to
meet young people's needs
3.1 The current legal aid system fails to meet
the needs of young people. It is adult orientated and overly focussed
upon areas of law and outputs, rather than client groups and outcomes.
Practitioners often have little understanding of young people
and lack the specific skills to effectively serve them. Provider
outlets are often "psychologically inaccessible" to
young people. Successive policy developments—such as expanding
the (little-used by young people) CLA service; CLACs and CLANs;
the fixed fee regime; and the LSC procurement strategy—have
served to further marginalise young people's legal advice needs.
3.2 The evidence of this failure is starkly clear.
Research has shown that each year[61]:
16-24-year-olds will experience at least 2.3 million
rights-related problems requiring advice.
More than a quarter of these problems will be experienced
by young people who are not in employment, education or training
(NEETs).
As many as 200,000 problems will result in young
people trying, but failing, to obtain advice, often because there
is no service able to help them.
In all, considerably fewer than half of all young
people with serious social welfare problems will actually manage
to obtain advice.
At least one million young people are left to cope
with their problems unassisted.
3.3 The cost of the country's collective failure
to provide this vulnerable group with the legal advice services
it needs is likely, based on existing research, to amount to at
least several hundred million pounds a year[62].
Evidence of young people's needs for advice
3.4 Young people have very particular needs for
legal advice and ways of seeking help. Youth Access has worked
with the Legal Services Research Centre to analyse and interpret
data relating to the 18-24 year age group from the Civil and Social
Justice Surveys. The data shows that:[63]
Problem incidence: Approximately
one-third of 18-24-year-olds had experienced at least one civil
justice problem in the previous three and a half years. While
broadly similar to the population as a whole, it is likely that
CSJS data significantly under-estimates the relative prevalence
of young people's problems.
Subject areas: The pattern
of young people's problems differs markedly from that of other
age groups. Young people are much more likely to experience problems
relating to rented housing, homelessness, employment, discrimination
and problems with the police.
Relevance to the proposed Legal Aid reforms:
Young people increasingly account for a disproportionate number
of all people with problems in the key subject areas of social
welfare law that fall within the remit of the Community Legal
Service and that are proposed for exclusion or restriction from
Legal Aid.
Multiple problems: Young
people, particularly the 22-24 age group and disadvantaged young
people, are prone to multiple problems. As people experience multiple
problems, they are increasingly likely to experience problems,
such as homelessness, that play a direct role in social exclusion.
Interrelated needs: Reflecting
the complexity of the adolescent transition, young people's social
welfare problems rarely develop in isolation from inter-connected
practical, emotional and personal issues—concerning for
example, relationship breakdown, stress, depression, abuse, drugs
and alcohol or education—pointing to a need for legal advice
to be closely integrated with other services that young people
use. Disadvantaged young people typically present to services
with multiple problems, including a range of social welfare problems,
as well as health, personal and emotional issues.[64]
Evidence of barriers to access to legal advice
for young people
3.5 Youth Access has consistently demonstrated
for a number of years that there are significant barriers which
make young people less likely to obtain advice. The evidence shows
that:[65]
Young people are considerably less likely to obtain
professional advice than other age groups; are much more likely
to do nothing about obtaining advice; and are more likely to try
but fail to get advice.[66]
In 2001 young people were seven times more likely
to have experienced a homelessness problem than adults over the
age of 25, but eleven times less likely to have obtained advice.[67]
Young people are reluctant to access mainstream advice
services established predominantly for the adult population.
There is a low awareness among children and young
people that they have rights at all, let alone knowledge of what
those rights might be. This is matched by a low awareness of advice
services, a lack of belief that anything can be done to help them
and a fear of or reluctance to access advice services.
Many young people feel disconnected from the legal
system, feeling it is something that is "done to them"
rather than something which conveys them rights. All this is particularly
true of the most disadvantaged young people.
Only 0.4% of advisers and solicitors practising social
welfare law in the private sector report that young people are
one of the client groups they target.[68]
The cumulative impact of the proposals in the
context of wider spending cuts
3.6 The impact of the proposed cuts to legal
aid is likely to be severely detrimental both to the supplier
base of legal advice providers and to vulnerable people's access
to justice, particularly when viewed in the context of wider public
service cuts.
3.7 We concur with the submission of the Advice
Services Alliance that the NfP advice sector is likely to be disproportionately
affected by the proposals because these agencies tend to specialise
in those areas of law where the Government proposes to make the
deepest cuts.
3.8 We are deeply concerned about the future
viability of many NfP advice agencies, given the cumulative effect
of the Government's legal aid proposals and other public sector
cuts, including the termination of the Financial Inclusion Fund,
the ending of London Councils' funding for many advice services
and local authority cuts to advice services.
3.9 The potential closure of some CABx, Law Centres
and other NfP providers, and the certain reduction in capacity
of many other agencies, will, in our opinion, lead to hundreds
of thousands of vulnerable clients being denied access to justice.
3.10 We very much doubt that other parts of the
voluntary and community sector will be able to "take up the
slack", as envisaged in the Government's plans for a Big
Society. Within the youth sector, for example, voluntary sector
agencies, including many of the youth advice agencies within Youth
Access' membership, are currently facing very deep cuts and will
be unable to conduct any advice work for which they do not receive
specific funding. The Connexions Service, meanwhile, is being
dismantled in many areas.
3.11 Evidence from the CSJS indicates that those
unable to obtain advice for their civil justice problems experience
a range of adverse consequences, costing the public purse over
£13 million per annum.[69]
We believe that the proposed changes will inevitably lead to greatly
increased knock-on costs to other public services in the longer
term.
The likely impact of shifting resources from face-to-face
to telephone delivery
3.12 Our understanding from the Green Paper is
that the "vast majority" of clients will access civil
legal aid services through a "simple, straightforward telephone
service" that will act as a single gateway to civil legal
aid services. Face-to-face advice will only be available where
cases are too complex to be dealt with by telephone or where the
client's specific needs would not be met.
3.13 We share the view of the Advice Services
Alliance in its submission that the proposed shift to telephone
services will impact severely on access to justice for many vulnerable
groups and that there is a lack of evidence to support the MoJ's
justification for the shift on financial grounds.
3.14 Our own evidence indicates that young people
are very likely to be adversely affected by the changes to an
even greater extent than many other vulnerable groups. (We note
that the MoJ's Equalities Impact Assessment (EIA) states that
it has taken account of evidence from the CSJS conducted by the
LSRC, including work with Youth Access to examine data on how
young people use different channels to get advice, but, oddly,
the EIA does not then make any comment about the likely impact
of the proposals on young people.)
3.15 Our research found that:[70]
Young people are far more likely to access advice
face-to-face than other age groups. Data from the CSJS indicates
that, whereas people aged 25 and over were more likely to make
initial contact by telephone than face-to-face, the opposite was
true for young people.
Young people's preference for face-to-face advice
relates to trust, confidence and communication skills. The evidence
suggests that remote mediums, such as email and the telephone,
are not as conducive to building the trust with an adviser which
is necessary for young people to open up about their social welfare
problems.
Disadvantaged young people, who experience the most
severe problems, are considerably less likely to have access to
telephones and the internet than their better-off peers.
Cost, deprivation and communication skills are barriers
to accessing advice by telephone. Many young people simply cannot
afford the cost of a potentially lengthy phone call. The cost
of calling (even some "free") helplines can be prohibitively
expensive for young people, who tend to use mobile phones with
text-focussed call packages.
Those least likely to benefit from telephone advice
services include young men and those with lower levels of education,
language difficulties or lower incomes.
Young people tend to say they would prefer face-to-face
advice for more complex problems. Successful helplines for young
people tend to focus on sensitive personal, emotional and health
issues rather than legal or practical issues.
Young people are less likely to use the internet
for information and advice than other age groups. Although they
are major users of the internet overall, young people mainly use
the internet for entertainment and social networking and appear
to be significantly less likely than other age groups to use it
for formal information gathering and for getting advice. This
was particularly true for disadvantaged young respondents to the
CSJS; almost none of this group had used the internet to get advice
about a legal problem.
The case for targeting legal aid investment where
it can have the greatest impact
3.16 We believe there is a strong case for targeting
legal aid investment where it can have the greatest impact.
3.17 We believe this involves taking a broader
view than simply looking at issues of loss of liberty or imminent
homelessness, but should involve reconfiguring services to be
more client-centred and targeting services better at those client
groups for whom getting advice has the greatest beneficial impact.
3.18 We make the case below (see paras. 3.19
to 3.25) for legal aid resources to be targeted at young people.
This client group is disproportionately affected by social welfare
problems but less able and less likely to obtain advice. The evidence
also shows that young people's legal problems tend to be severe
and have a greater impact on their lives than similar problems
for older adults. It is also becoming clear that young people
benefit more from obtaining advice than older adults.
Evidence of the disproportionate adverse impact
of civil justice problems on young people[71]
3.19 Young people appear to experience relatively
severe problems, evidenced by the type of problems they experience,
their greater reliance on face to face services and the disproportionate
impact that problems have on them.
3.20 Disadvantaged young adults are significantly
more likely than the population as a whole to worry about their
problems and to report (as a result of their problems) stress-related
illness; violence (aimed at them); loss of home; loss of confidence;
and physical ill-health.
3.21 Young people fare worse than average when
they have a civil justice problem due to their inherent vulnerability
and their relatively little experience of "the system"
compared to older groups.
3.22 In addition, young people are less likely
to obtain advice than older age groups, rendering it less likely
that their problems will be resolved and the impact of their problems
ameliorated.
Evidence of the disproportionate beneficial impact
of getting advice on young people
3.23 Research for Youth Access has highlighted
the positive contribution that advice can make to achieving good
outcomes for young people[72].
3.24 CSJS data indicates that 18-24-year-olds
are twice as likely to meet their objectives where they do manage
to obtain advice in comparison to when they handle their problems
alone. By contrast, older adults meet their objectives only slightly
more often where they obtain advice[73].
3.25 This data suggests strongly that advice
may make a greater difference for certain types of clients than
others and it could be particularly important to ensure that young
people are helped to get good advice to deal with their social
welfare problems.
January 2011
61 These figures have been calculated by Youth Access
using data from the 2006-08 Civil and Social Justice Survey. The
calculations have been checked by the Legal Services Research
Centre and are deemed to under-estimate the extent of young people's
unmet needs for advice. Back
62
Ministry of Justice economists have used CSJS data to estimate
that over a three-and-a-half-year research period, unresolved
law-related problems cost individuals and the public purse at
least £13 billion. Back
63
The advice needs of young people-the evidence: Key research
evidence on young people's needs for advice on social welfare
issues. Kenrick, J, Youth Access, 2009. Back
64
Transitions: Young Adults with Complex Needs: A Social Exclusion
Unit Final Report, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005. Back
65
Young people's access to advice-the evidence: Key research
evidence on young people's access to advice on social welfare
issues, Kenrick, J, Youth Access, 2009. Back
66
Young people and civil justice: findings from the 2004 Civil
& Social Justice Survey, Balmer et al, Youth Access, 2007. Back
67
For an analysis of data on young people and homelessness in the
Legal Services Research Centre's Civil & Social Justice Surveys
see Locked Out: The prevalence and impact of housing and homelessness
problems amongst young people, and the impact of good advice,
Kenrick, J, Youth Access, 2007. Back
68
According to data analysed by Youth Access from the Workforce
Survey conducted by the LSRC for the National Occupational Standards
for the Legal Advice Sector project. Back
69
Getting earlier, better advice to vulnerable people, Ministry
of Justice, 2006. Back
70
Kenrick op. cit. (Access) Back
71
Kenrick op. cit. (Needs); Balmer et al op. cit. Back
72
Youth Advice Outcomes Pilot, Evaluation Trust for Youth
Access, 2010. Back
73
The LSRC analysed data for Youth Access on the extent to which
respondents met their objectives relating to 9,591 adults aged
18 and over, including 841 young adults aged between 18 and 24,
interviewed between 12 January 2006 and 31 September 2008. Back
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