Working Together for Advice project

What is it?

The Advice Services Alliance (ASA) has been awarded £5,714,742 by the Big Lottery Fund under the first phase of its Advice Plus programme. The funding is for three years and will deliver a multiple strand project that will provide a range of support services to independent advice centres in England.

Who's doing it?

The project is being delivered by a consortium comprising:

• ASA
• Adviceuk
• Age Concern and Help the Aged
• Citizens Advice
• Law Centres Federation
• Youth Access

How will it benefit the advice sector?

The services provided under the project are delivered through eight workstreams:

• Developing access to advice. We will look at ways of improving the accessibility of advice services to those with greatest need. This will include models of service delivery or good practice, focusing on how to improve clients' initial contact with advice services.
• User and stakeholder involvement. We will investigate how to increase user and stakeholder involvement in the management and development of advice services by identifying best practice through research, development of a toolkit and delivering appropriate training.
• Enhancing frontline advice. We will deliver direct support for the setting up of sustainable partnerships and advice forums and we will establish new advice centres and law centres.
• Developing a quality mark. We aim to develop a national scheme for accrediting agencies providing advice services at the current General Help Quality Mark level.
• Advice outcomes. We will help advice agencies to define, measure and evaluate the outcomes of advice work and so enable the sector to better demonstrate the value of its work.
• Developing discrimination advice. We will deliver a discrimination advice training programme and establish referral networks and protocols to develop links, partnerships and referral agreements between agencies.
• Workforce development and training. We will enable the sector to attract and retain staff and volunteers by accrediting trainers and developing a qualifications and accreditation framework.
• Promoting advice. We will establish an annual England-wide celebration and promotion of advice services; build the capacity of advice agencies to promote their services to target groups; create generic promotion materials; and promote the benefits and outcomes of advice work to funders and other stakeholders.

Promoting Advice information page
Workforce development and training
 
The project started in January 2008. We will keep you updated via these pages on how the project is progressing.
 
For further information, please contact Ida Forster, Working Together for Advice Project Manager 020 7398 1474