Review of Advice Services

Last week Huw Lewis, the Welsh Government’s Minister for Communities and Tackling Poverty announced £1.8 million new money for free advice services to begin to implement the government’s report on advice services in Wales which was published the week before.  The review had been commissioned last summer as part of its response to the Westminster Government’s welfare reform programme and the cuts in legal aid, creating the double whammy of more work and less resources at the same time.

In launching the report last week Huw Lewis, said ‘I am not going to see Welsh advice agencies fall off a cliff in the way they may do in England’. Last Thursday he announced the new money and challenged the advice sector:

“ … the recent review shows that free advice services must change and adapt, especially at a time of cuts in public spending. I want the sector to do all it can to address issues of duplication and coverage to make sure all communities across Wales can access help. The Welsh Government will not be able to take on the burden of funding all services, but I want to make sure people do not fall through the cracks given the changes.”

The fact that there has been a review of advice services in Wales at all is good news.

That someone in government cares about whether people have the advice and support they need to go about their daily lives, to enforce their rights and cope with all that is being thrown at them at the moment is not a feeling many in England will be able to share. But that does not mean the review has all the answers, or that the available funding will be enough to really make a difference.

The report is a substantial document of several hundred pages which reviews the history and use of those agencies that give advice, maps provision, considers new ways of doing things and comes up with ten major recommendations.

In summary these involve better networking at a Wales and regional/local level to make better use of the current substantial resources that fund advice services, links to local service boards to ensure the planning of advice services is integrated with needs and with other services, better coordination with the Welsh government itself of its own funding of advice services, implementing good practice in commissioning and joint funding, the need for specialist discrimination advice, and the development of a common framework of standards.

These are all very positive steps forward which, if fully implemented, will help to protect people in Wales from the worst excesses of the welfare reform programme. There are lots of good ideas in there, many examples of good practice, and a number of common sense approaches to solving long-standing problems.

However, my initial reading of the review report suggests a couple of missed opportunities.

The first is almost total absence of the role of the private practice legal profession from the report; and the second is the suggestion that better networking needs to be encouraged at national (Wales), regional (Local Service Board) and local (local authority) levels – to me this is too complicated and runs the risk of over-networking! Yes – Wales needs a national network to set standards, to set the framework for commissioning and inform the role of the regional networks; and yes to regional networks which will plan and commission for services at a local level, but I don’t see a future for local networks as well at a time when local authorities are being encouraged to work together across regions for all their other services.

Bob Chapman was formerly acting Wales Director at the Legal Services Commission, and is now a management consultant, member of the Welsh Committee of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council and a Member of the Board of Consumer Focus Wales. He is also a Trustee of the Bevan Foundation.