“The advice sector faces a £15-£20 million shortfall when trying to meet the immediate new demand which has been significantly exacerbated by the cost of living crisis”
Source: Funding Gap Report 2023-24 https://nfj.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2023-Funding-Gap-Report-FINAL.pdf
CJF was originally set up in response to the Covid 19 pandemic, as a way to bring together funders to support the sector in managing the crisis. Since then, there have been three waves of funding the most recent being in December 2022 to support organisations to mitigate the impacts of the Cost of Living Crisis.
- Organisations are seeing an increase in demand of as much as 48% and in some cases much more.
- A quarter of organisations surveyed are responding to the crisis by providing emergency vouchers (for food, fuel, energy)
- Over half of those surveyed are concerned about staff poverty
- Over half of those surveyed are concerned about whether they will be able to fund salary increases
Source: Cost of Living Survey, Access to Justice Foundation (August 2022)
What we continue to learn from working together is how we as funders can collaborate to design processes which support organisations applying for funding
This can be through:
- A single portal for applications
- Sharing information on due diligence
- Applying a flexible funding approach to how we work with our grantees.
- Ensuring that monitoring and evaluation requirements are proportionate and do not produce undue burden on a sector struggling with the impacts of increased demand and staffing challenges.
- Collating a joint evidence base to support the case for further investment.
- Involving organisations in designing processes
- Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in grant making.
49% of CJF wave one grantees were led by people with lived experience of the issues addressed by advice services.
We have been able to gather valuable insight into the state of the sector. This insight supports our work in making the case for further investment.
Most noticeably there is a need for multi-year, flexible funding to:
- Ensure the sustainability of the sector particularly in light of soaring costs and increasing demand.
“Our latest research shows that the not-for-profit specialist advice sector is facing a £17.5 million funding deficit in 2022-23. This will result in over 36,800 vulnerable people losing access to specialist advice, and as a consequence many of them will fall into crisis.”
Source: Financial-Health-of-the-Not-for-Profit-Specialist-Advice-Sector-2022-23.pdf (atjf.org.uk)
- Provide opportunities for development and growth to manage demand and the increasing complexity of client situations.
- Cope with the challenges of recruiting and retaining staff whether through salary increases, development opportunities or support.
- Support the development of partnerships and networks locally, regionally, and nationally.
- Understand levels of need and how advice reaches marginalised communities or those most in need.
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Continue to provide Funder Plus support to organisations.
Under our current Funder Plus programme we were able to support 92 individual managers and over 50 organisations. Working closely with sector umbrella organisations and funders, the Hub aims to support managers and thus to improve the sustainability of the sector though improved management and effective governance. It also aims to create a management network and clear management career path across the specialist advice sector.
This vital funding enables advice organisations to address wider societal issues:
- Early access to legal support can prevent clients reaching crisis point and needing additional longer-term support i.e., Health and Social Care, Justice System, Homelessness Services
- Access to advice can improve health and wellbeing, recognising the detrimental effects challenges such as debt, poverty and discrimination can have on a person’s health.
- Enables citizens to challenge inequality and discrimination by improving legal capability and understanding of one’s rights.
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Address barriers to accessing justice ensuring that marginalised communities or groups of people are able to seek and receive practical and emotional support when they need it most.
Some of the most common barriers to accessing justice as recorded by the advice organisations we work with are:- Language Barriers
- Requested services not being available.
- Accessibility particularly for people with disabilities
- Digital Exclusion
- Cultural Barriers
Funding enables organisations to address these barriers by: - Taking advice to the community and partnering with community organisations
- Carrying out regular client and community profile analysis to understand who is not using legal services and target them.
- Providing language translation and interpretation services e.g., through recruiting multilingual staff
- Improving websites: navigation, content, readability Source: Access to Justice Foundation analysis of grant applications, October 2022
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Make savings to the public purse by ensuring that people have early access to legal support through the provision of free specialist legal advice.
“Organisations supported by the Community Justice Fund help 483,000 clients a year. The average net benefit to Treasury for each client helped is £8,000, while the average cost of advice provision is just £510 per person. This equates to a net benefit to the public purse of £4 billion per year.”