Reaching underserved communities to tackle inequality

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Guest post by Associate Professor Liz Curran of Nottingham Law School and Claire Stern, deputy chief executive officer of the Central England Law Centre

Liz Curran

A report recently published by the Nuffield Foundation highlighted the critical role of trusted intermediaries. It provides “fresh evidence to inform early intervention and public legal education strategies. These focus on how trusted intermediaries can support access to justice for marginalised communities in collaboration with specialist legal and advice services”.

Trusted intermediaries are organisations, and their staff, who are not lawyers, but to whom community members turn to for help with a range of problems, some of which may be legal or caused by legal issues.

It can include organisations that support specific parts of the community, for example women and young people, and specialist services such as health services, foodbanks, domestic violence, drug and alcohol services.

Having both worked with trusted intermediaries, it is refreshing to see this report, produced in collaboration with Central England Law Centre, Advice Now and the University of Warwick. Trusted intermediaries thus far, have been underexplored in UK literature and service delivery in comparison to many other jurisdictions.

The findings in the Nuffield research show legal need is widespread, escalating and deeply intertwined with structural disadvantage. It calls for a shift in approach, from reacting late to acting early, from working in silos to building collaboration, and from disconnected approaches to ones that are grounded in local knowledge.

These changes aren’t just possible, they’re essential if we want to tackle inequality – not just in Central England (operating in Coventry and Birmingham) but to build a model that can be sustained and replicated at a national level.

Central England Law Centre takes a collaborative approach working with trusted intermediaries to pool limited resources – tailoring legal support with different communities in mind. It is about relationships and a client-centred approach despite limited resources and increasing demand.

Since 2013, cuts to civil legal aid across the UK have created a landscape that is siloed, fragmented with inadequate legal support services. Opportunities for human-centred responses and addressing causes of ‎inequality and systemic drivers are missed. They need not be.

A recent Nottingham Law School research report commissioned by the Legal Services Consumer Panel in collaboration with the Legal Services Board urges urgent action. It presented multiple, tested options (including the power of trusted intermediaries) after decades of inaction from government and regulators.

Government and regulators are in the ideal position to address this landscape. Despite the array of options to use regulatory levers in the report (including methods to increase funding for access to justice), there seems to be little appetite to act.

This is despite the fact that under section 1(c) of the Legal Services Act 2007, the regulators are under an obligation to improve access to justice. Commissioning a report alone without action will not lead to the necessary changes, leaving millions of community members missing out on legal support.

Claire Stern

A critical method of reaching into underserved communities in Canada and Australia, completely unexplored in the UK, is a role for legal secondary consultations. This is integrally connected to building the power of the trusted intermediary approach.

Secondary consultations are where a lawyer gives one-to-one information or advice in a timely and approachable way to trusted intermediaries likely to have contact with vulnerable and disadvantaged clients. It is an effective way of reaching clients who would otherwise not gain legal help or advice.

The premise is that legal secondary consultations build capacity and confidence in trusted intermediaries to identify legal issues and assist clients in navigating legal issues or processes. The trusted intermediary either supports the client or, where appropriate, refers clients who would otherwise not get help because of a range of inhibitors. Trusted intermediaries can also check in for further legal advice and support.

Legal secondary consultations enable trusted intermediaries to identify legal issues which, if unidentified or unresolved, can impact significantly on clients’ lives.

Building capability and responsiveness for trusted intermediaries beyond mere signposting (complicated in the UK, if there is nowhere to refer or legal supports turn people away because they are at capacity) is an innovation that UK policy makers and funders could think about building on the Nuffield report.

Policy makers and funders need to explore how secondary consultations might be funded and form part of the service delivery landscape with law centres working with trusted intermediaries in the United Kingdom.

Evidence is too often overlooked by government and regulators when they implement policies or make funding decisions. Ironically, measures discussed here are more cost effective and can lead to downstream savings in other areas such as health and social services and ultimately have better outcomes for members of the community.

The difficulty is that mindsets in the UK tend to be intransigent and too often follow market models of service delivery that are well past their use-by date. Most have never been evaluated as effective, especially in terms of client and community outcomes.

What is needed is a mindset that scales up and directs limited resources to wiser ways of working in the UK informed by the evidence and with local exigencies in mind. Homogeneity too often drives funders and policy makers at a national level but is often blunt in terms of value for money and outcomes.

Encouragingly, there are moves in the Ministry of Justice to think more strategically in legal support delivery, but the proof will be in the pudding.