Community Legal Advice Family Pilot
Working alongside Howells solicitors, In July 2007, we became one of three organisations selected to deliver a pilot for a specialist telephone advice service in family law, funded by the Legal Services Commission. The pilot commenced delivery in October 2007 and after proving incredibly successful, the pilot was rolled into a national service from August 2009, integrating into the Community Legal Advice service.
The aims of the pilot were to:
- Address the need for increased access to family legal advice and services, especially targeting the socially excluded and vulnerable, who are not able to access family legal services through traditional routes
- Deliver services in domestic violence, public law children and private law children
- Increase the number of family acts and advice and deliver value for money
- Assess the potential demand for family legal advice over the telephone and highlight any unmet need for family services
Following independent evaluation, the pilot proved successful against these aims:
- the pilot received 38,380 family calls into the operator service, with 6,311 of these becoming specialist legal cases
- proved successful at reaching a more diverse client base than traditional face-to-face services, with 11% of callers describing themselves as having a disability compared with 7% on face-to-face and 20% of callers representing BME compared to 11% ion face-to-face
- 100% of clients reported that they would recommend the service to others and 82% stated that the advice they received enabled them to resolve their problems
- the pilot delivered value for money, with an average cost of 'one-off piece of' advice costing £61.06 versus £108.83 on face-to-face deliver
Following a successful launch of the national service, the extra capacity has had an immediate impact, achieving 5,376 cases in the first month.