Dr Sarah Nason, Bangor University

The need for social welfare legal (SWL) advice has been increasing, with Covid and the cost-of-living crisis exacerbating existing issues and precipitating new problems. This increase in need is set against cuts to services and a drive towards ‘digital by default’ delivery. Local, community-orientated organisations, community centres and hubs, as well as key community individuals, are well-placed to respond flexibly and sensitively to needs but can be under-recognised and under-resourced.

By comparing the SWL advice-seeking behaviours of people in diverse case-study areas, their social networks, and their community facilities and characteristics, our research examined how access to advice interacts with community connectedness, (in)equality and wellbeing. The case-studies were Deeplish in Greater Manchester; the village of Bryngwran, on the Isle of Anglesey, Wales; Dartmouth, in the South Hams District of Devon; and several locations in the London Borough of Hackney. This project has been funded by the British Academy and Nuffield Foundation collaboration on Understanding Communities, but the views expressed are those of the authors.

Key findings

Community-embedded culturally sensitive services are crucial

Community-based organisations, which are culturally and linguistically sensitive to the communities served, are crucial in helping identify those struggling and in providing early help. To be effective, they must be embedded physically and socially in communities and have good connections to formal SWL advice providers, though the optimum form of connection varies. Providing these services is complex, especially in areas experiencing multiple deprivation and those which are remotely located, where poverty and affluence are juxtaposed, or where communities are otherwise divided.

‘Digital by default’ will not meet people’s needs

There is little evidence of community demand for more online advice provision. Locally based in-person services are preferred for reasons of accessibility but perhaps most importantly due to the importance of building familiarity and trust with an adviser, particularly one who shares some of their own characteristics.

Community characteristics are key for understanding advice-seeking behaviour and prospects for problem resolution

Which case-study community someone lived in appeared to have a greater effect on what people did (or did not do) about their SWL problems, and the likelihood of their receiving help and of having problems resolved, than people’s individual characteristics (e.g., age, gender, employment, receipt of benefits, disability).

Key individuals working as community connectors or navigators provide a significant source of help, but are often unable to resolve people’s problems

Reasons include their own capacity, challenges around data sharing, the complex nature of the problems people bring to them, and high demand and limited resources in the services they connect into. Some of these individuals also have more social capital, and more ‘agency’ (capacity to transform existing states of affairs) to effectively utilise it, than others.

The nature and complexity of a SWL problem is key to how easily it is resolved

Some problems have a ‘smooth’ resolution pathway once an adviser is involved; others confound resolution regardless of access. Benefits problems, while often highly distressing, are generally more smoothly resolved through established processes, whereas problems concerning housing need or repairs, Special Educational Needs, or mental health, for example, are more difficult to resolve, often involving delays and inadequate responses.

There is a need to raise awareness of advice and legal services

Across all the case-studies, many interviewees had not shared their problems with anyone. Interviewees with larger and more connected social networks were generally aware of more organisations/services providing help with SWL problems. Awareness of advice services was also linked to having experienced a problem; those who had previously sought help were mostly likely to know where to go in future.

There are limits to the benefits of social networks, strong communities and effective advice provision for ensuring access to justice

The size of (number of people in) someone’s social network, and its connectedness (the extent to which individuals in the network know each other), made only a small difference to the likelihood of their having experienced SWL problems or of those problems having been resolved.

It is therefore unlikely that greater levels of inter-community connectedness alone are the key to resolving SWL problems experienced by individuals. Rather, the ease with which SWL problems are resolved appears to depend on multiple complex and nuanced factors, including the community’s access to knowledge and political resources; its socio-geographical features and civic authority structure; and the type and complexity of the problems people experience.

In our data, the more a problem had been shared, the less likely it was to have been resolved; if someone had to contact several potential sources of help, the problem tended to have been a difficult one to resolve and/or they had found it challenging to find the right adviser. Again, this suggests that it isn’t just the size of people’s networks or scope of sharing that matters, but the resources of the people and organisations with whom a problem is shared.

Stronger social networks can also impede access to help for problem resolution, e.g., where someone within a well-connected community had shared their negative experience of a service, others were subsequently less likely to access that service. Individuals in well-connected communities may also be reluctant to share problems due to feelings of shame or stigma.

Many of the problems people face stem from shrinking state provision and longer-term structural inequalities. Communities provide substantial support in the form of food, goods, furniture, social support, and connections to advice and other services, but this reaches a limit where three types of circumstance apply, often in combination:

• Problems require more specialist advice from formal SWL advisers to address legal rights and entitlements;
• Problems arise from ‘failure demand’ (where another part of the system fails to do something or to do it right), especially in government decision-making;
• Problems are caused by cuts to local public services provision, compounded by cuts to advice sector funding.

When service closures mean the loss of the very physical community spaces where people meet to build and develop their social networks, it is even harder for communities to make a difference. And while informal community and identity-based organisations can connect people to formal SWL advice services, if these formal services don’t receive proper funding, there may be access to help but no access to justice.