On the journey of changing systems – what we can learn from the Advice Workforce Development Fund
Through Propel, London Legal Support Trust along with City Bridge Foundation, Trust for London, the National Lottery Community Fund, The Legal Education Foundation and GLA have been working with advice organisations on the Advice Workforce Development Fund (AWDF) to address the root causes of workforce challenges in the advice sector.
To help deepen our understanding of what it takes to both fund change and change funding, we spoke with Nezahat Cihan, Chief Executive of the London Legal Support Trust and some of the advice organisations working to tackle the root causes of the advice workforce crisis, including Bruna Boscaini (Director at Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation), Jerry During, (CEO and Co-founder of Money A+E), Tracey Lazard (CEO of Inclusion London) and Liz Mercer (Associate Business Consultant at Inclusion London).
Q: Nezahat, can you tell us about the Advice Workforce Development Fund and how you see it contributing to creating systemic changes in the advice sector?
Nezahat (London Legal Support Trust): Access to advice is crucial for people to exercise their rights and entitlements but over recent years, advice services have been one of the first services to be cut by local and central government when financial pressures hit. The legal aid cuts with the introduction of Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) for example, has been a huge blow to the specialist legal advice sector and it’s had a knock-on effect on every other advice service, especially those who refer clients to legal aid funded specialist advice services.
The cuts to free legal and social welfare advice have also had a very significant impact on the advice workforce because organisations don’t have the money to recruit, train, maintain or pay their staff appropriately. If you compare a newly graduated solicitor or lawyer in the private sector, they start with a salary in the region of £60,000 – £70,000 whereas organisations who provide free advice can hardly pay around £33,000-£35,000 (even lower in many organisations) for a new recruit. Advice workers are overworked and underpaid. Those working in our sector care deeply about the communities they support, which means they’ll often work long hours, take on lots of cases because they want to help and often see themselves as the last resort for so many desperate clients. Additionally, cases that are referred to advice agencies are more complex than before and require a longer time to get an outcome (if any). These lead to burnout and coupled with low pay, we’re really struggling to recruit and retain new advisors.
The whole idea of an Advice Development Work Fund (ADWF) actually started in one of the London Funders’ Advice Network meetings back in 2019. We had a presentation from the Advice Services Alliance on the findings from their ‘Advising Londoners’ report. The workforce crisis was one of the most significant issues identified in the report. Together with Trust for London, City Bridge Foundation, The National Lottery Community Fund and the Legal Education Foundation, we felt we had to take collective action to address what was becoming a systemic issue. As funders, we knew we could play a role in improving the pay and conditions so that advice workers stay in the sector rather than move elsewhere where the pay and conditions are better.
“We felt we had to take collective action to address what was becoming a systemic issue and causing more and more issues in the advice sector”.
Nezahat Cihan, London Legal Support Trust
As the AWDF collaboration group, we decided to start responding to the systematic issues that we were in control of and could change to get some positive results and then work with others who are working on policy change to influence the wider decision-making process in changing the systems that we have no control of.
Bruna, Jerry, Liz and Tracey, your organisations all deliver advice services. What are some of the issues you’ve seen on the ground and how has the Advice Workforce Development Fund enabled you to explore and tackle those systemic issues Nezahat has mentioned?
Jerry (Money A+E): What we’ve seen through our work is that if you’re in a vulnerable or excluded group and you’re living in poverty, you do not have the same access to your rights and services that you’re entitled to. So, the cuts in legal aid and advice services more broadly mean that those in the most vulnerable positions don’t have a voice. We’re also seeing that those who create the welfare policies and services are too far removed from the issues, which means they often design measures that are counterintuitive and take us further away from where we need to be.
“We know that the systems we work in have been created by people and therefore they can be changed by people”.
Jerry During, Money A+E
In terms of our solution to those issues, we think lived experience is key, and so it’s vital to build up the voices of those who have experienced poverty and who need advice services. We’re trying to build their capacity through training and getting them employed in advice services so that those with lived experience can actually help design and implement the solutions. We’re also working with other advice organisations, funders, local authorities, and the banking industry to ensure we have the right level of lived and technical expertise to tackle those systemic issues together.
We’re at the stage where we’re working with all those stakeholders to identify what the problems are. We’re not working on the assumptions of the government or even the assumptions of the advice sector and practitioners – we’re working on identifying the issues and solutions based on what those with lived experience tell us.
Bruna (IRMO): one thing I would highlight as an advantage to the work we’re doing through the ADWF and Propel is that we’re all organisations led by and for the communities we support. In our case, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from the Latin American community. It’s great to see that led by and for organisations are being valued more – it wasn’t like that in the past and it is easy to take that for granted now, but being able to bring the perspective of led by and for organisations to discussions with funders and other partners is so important in trying to tackle those systemic issues because we have that closeness to the community.
For organisations led by and for their communities, it’s common to offer advice services because we know how our community are facing multiple barriers. So, while we have a lot of experience offering advice provision to our communities, we’re also experiencing not just a lack of sufficient funding but also a lack of time to really think strategically about the advice we’re offering and how we contribute to tackling the systemic issues that are leaving so many in our community needing advice in the first place. That’s one of the things we love so much about our engagement with Propel – the fact that we’ve been given time to actually think about the work we do and how we can improve it has been invaluable. It’s also enabled us to collaborate with other organisations in the sector, sharing best practices, identifying issues and implementing what we’re learning from each other.
Tracey (Inclusion London): I think the freedom to focus on our practice and new ways of working that aren’t tied to service delivery has been really helpful. It means we’ve been able to do detailed learning about how you create opportunities, how you recruit and attract new people and how we can support people to stay in the advice workforce. The critical bit of the learning is how valuable people find the training and peer networking – advice workers have told us they probably would have left their jobs if it wasn’t for those opportunities to network and share learning with their peers. So, the learning we’re gathering shows that funding training, peer networking and support are essential to tackling those systemic issues, not a discretionary add-on.
“The collaboration between organisations and being given the freedom to really explore systemic issues is also leading to wider impacts across the advice sector”
Liz Mercer, Inclusion London
Liz (Inclusion London): We’ve been able to bring seven disabled trainees into the advice workforce, which has made a huge difference to them in terms of providing an opportunity for them as disabled people who are very capable but who have struggled to enter the workforce. We’ve also been able to recruit and promote five case workers who are now casework supervisors – that opportunity just didn’t exist before. So, we’ve been able to offer career progression to those already in the advice workforce and bring in disabled people as advisors. One of our partners also told us that the way he’s worked through Propel has changed his whole organisation’s approach to recruiting disabled workers. Through peer networking and developing a stronger evidence base, partners are also more confident in conversations with local authorities about economic disadvantage and equity for disabled people. So, the collaboration between organisations and being given the freedom to really explore systemic issues in the advice sector is also leading to wider impacts across the sector.
Q: You’ve all mentioned how Propel and the Advice Workforce Development Fund have enabled you to collaborate and build relationships across sectors. What were some of the key learning points for you all in this process?
Nezahat (London Legal Support Trust): Collaboration has been central to the ADWF – it’s key to success for any kind of systems change work because the systems we work in are much bigger than we can individually tackle. We need to bring together expert organisations across sectors to successfully change the systems around advice provision so that we can recruit and retain new advisors.
For the AWDF that’s meant bringing together a diverse group of actors through a core steering group who oversees the delivery of the fund. The steering group has representatives from funders, specialist legal advice providers, umbrella groups and advice services led by and for their communities. We’ve also set up specific ‘task and finish’ groups who have expertise in the core issues the fund is seeking to address, such as salary benchmarking as well as conditions and coordination of advice in London.
Understandably, there are challenges with bringing together such a wide group of different stakeholders – it requires patience, resources, knowledge and understanding of various dynamics within the group. It takes much longer to make decisions, and we need to invest generously to ensure everyone is engaged in the decision-making process. But, we know this is the only effective way to work if we want to tackle structural issues and bring about systems change.
Bruna (IRMO): Our experience has been to use collaboration as a vehicle to tackle the issues around recruitment in the advice sector. We see how working in collaboration will require more of our time and will make decisions more complex, but equally, we know that it will be more impactful. And that’s not just because we’re able to better tackle the systemic issues together, but because through collaborating we avoid competing against each other and can gain additional learning. So, there are lots of benefits, but it does take time and that needs to be resourced which is what has been so valuable about Propel.
Jerry (Money A+E): Yes, I would echo all of that – one of the learning points for us is the importance of having formal structures around collaboration. The consortium of organisations we’ve brought together with the help of the ADWF funding has enabled us to bring a wide range of experiences and expertise around the same table. We all share the ambition of tackling those systemic issues in the advice sector and we want to see lived experience centred not just in policy making but also represented in our own organisations. The learning is about how we do this on a bigger scale, how do we bring the spirit and practice of cross-sector collaboration across the advice sector so we can tackle those issues of recruitment, retention and wider policy change.
Tracey (Inclusion London): One of the other benefits of working together with other advice services and Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) is that we’ve formed a collective voice where we can be more assertive with funders about the vision we have for supporting our communities through advice services. It’s meant we can challenge funders about funding part-time solo advice workers and encourage them to fund advice in a more strategic and joined-up way.
Liz (Inclusion London): The collective approach also enables us to not reinvent the wheel all the time – we can learn from each other, share resources and training opportunities and ensure that we have a collective approach to training, recruitment and development.
Q: One of the things we’ve been interested in understanding better is what it takes from funders to support and fund systems change initiatives. What are some of the actions funders have and can take that will make a difference to the work you’re doing?
Jerry (Money A+E): The listening element is really important – not just from funders but also the public sector, government departments and regulators listening and understanding the reality of what people are experiencing. We hear people talk about the poverty premium but there is also something we don’t focus on enough it is called ‘the Ethnicity Premium’ – this is basically the systemic injustices and discrimination that people from diverse ethnic communities and low-income groups experience in many areas of daily life. At Money A+E and our partners Rooted Finance, we are especially seeing the impact of this structural discrimination and injustice on our customers and service users in the areas of housing, finance, health and employment.
It’s not just about throwing money at the problem but making sure that money is used to resource the work sustainability so that we can actually make a change. Without listening to the people who are the most affected we’re not able to create effective solutions. The more we listen, co-design solutions and have those formal structures for cross-sector working, the better we will be able to address those entrenched problems, and the funding will go a lot further.
Bruna (IRMO): There is also an additional challenge of evidencing and collecting data on the issues we see on the ground, which is why it’s so important for funders to recognise lived experience as a valuable source of identifying challenges. Official data sets might not allow us to capture the extent of the challenges that many in the advice sector see on the ground every day. Being able to bring those insights to the funding agenda rather than having something imposed on you is key. We often see ourselves trying to squeeze the ideas and insights we have into specific priorities that funders have and sometimes they’re a little far from the reality we see on the ground. So, we have to deliver something that deviates from what we know is the best solution for our community and is going to be less efficient, just so we can get some funding. Being able to set the agenda together with funders and continue to have that flexibility we’ve had through this fund is really important. I would also add more time for learning – having that time and space to learn and then implement means we’re not making the same mistakes again.
“If we don’t have flexibility within the funding we’re receiving, we’re not able to be responsive. The communities that we’re all trying to help at the end of the day are the ones paying the price for this lack of flexibility within the sector”.
Bruna Boscaini, Indoamerican Refugee and Migrant Organisation
Liz (Inclusion London): I think the other point to mention is the importance of sustaining this work – so much time and effort has already been spent to create these partnerships, build up the evidence base and explore solutions to these systemic issues. That will all be wasted if there isn’t continued, long-term investment. We might then end up talking about the same issues in five years-time which will be a tragedy.
Q: Nezahat, what are some of the things you’ve learnt from taking a more systemic approach as a funder?
Nezahat (London Legal Support Trust): We consider ourselves as a partner rather than a funder in this collaboration– LLST was set up to raise money and contribute to the sustainability of the specialist legal advice sector. Our role in this partnership is to help build capacity, facilitate learning, and maintain and develop collaboration. We leave the rest to our advice sector partners to decide, as they are the experts in finding solutions and implementing them. Through building long-term and trusting relationships, we get to hear what does not work as well as what works. It is important to have open and trusting relations among partners to achieve the end goal of systemic change. System change requires test-and-learn projects that may or may not work. Organisations shouldn’t worry about being penalised for what did not work but should be given assurance that they have the flexibility and authority to change provisions as they see fit. We can see a lot of positive changes in the funding environment about this power shift already, but this needs to happen quicker if we want to work around systems change. Another learning point is around sustainability and long-term commitment – the Propel programme was initiated as potentially being a ten-year programme and this long-term commitment has created confidence and motivated partners to work towards systemic change that require long term investment.
For more lessons from the Advice Workforce Development Fund, check out this learning report carried out by Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR).
