CC(3) VS14

Communities and Culture Committee

Inquiry into the Funding of Voluntary Sector Organisations in Wales

1. Purpose

This paper provides initial evidence from Citizens Advice Cymru to support the above inquiry.  It contains information on the Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) network in Wales with references to a number of factors in relation to funding that affect the delivery of local CAB services to individuals and the community.  

2. Background

The CAB Service in Wales

2.1  The CAB service is the largest independent network of free advice centres in Wales.  The CAB network in Wales consists of 53 main offices and 147 secondary advice outlets.  Each CAB offers access to services by telephone, which is available 670 hours per week and the CAB service have arrangements in place to provide home visiting where necessary in every County.  

2.2  Of the 1605 people who work in the service in Wales, the majority (75 per cent) are trained volunteers. Our volunteers come from all communities, all ages and all backgrounds and bring valuable skills to the service. In 2006/07 89 new volunteer advisers completed their adviser training.  People can volunteer for the CAB service in a variety of roles. We always need more advisers, but we also need campaigners, fundraisers, trustees and administrators. All these roles are vital to keep the service going and also help people develop new skills for life beyond the bureau.  In 2006/07, nearly 40% of the volunteers who left us went on to paid employment.

2.3  There are 134 paid specialists working in bureaux in specific subject area such as money advice, welfare benefits, employment and discrimination.

2.4  Citizens advice Bureaux in Wales are supported by Citizens Advice Cymru, who form part of the England and Wales membership organisation - Citizens Advice, which provides organisational regulation in terms of service delivery and supports the development of Bureaux as community organisations.  

2.5  Citizens Advice Cymru provides support to member bureaux in Wales to ensure their continued presence in their local communities, access to the necessary training and information to provide consistently high quality advice and an audit service to ensure that standards remain high. Citizens Advice Cymru also co-ordinates social policy, campaigning, publicity, parliamentary and Assembly work. Its work is mainly funded through central government grant.

2.6  Citizens Advice Bureaux provide advice and information in a range of community settings from the high street to libraries, courts and GP surgeries. Bureaux rely on volunteers to keep their services running and receive funding from a variety of sources including Welsh Assembly Government, local authorities and various project funders.

2.7  A key role of the Citizens Advice Service is to influence change locally and nationally to the way services are delivered via our direct experiences with clients, in order to improve the lives of all individuals.

Advice

2.8  During 2006/07 Citizens Advice Bureaux in Wales helped people deal with 281,219 problems - of these 91,368 were debt related, accounting for 32 per cent of all CAB client problems and 95,674 (34 %) were benefit related. It is significant that Bureaux advised on 1,264 discrimination issues during the year. There was and overall 10% increase in client issues over the previous year and in addition the visits to our public information site, adviceguide.org.uk increased by 44%.

Responding to Change

2.9  The Citizens Advice Bureaux service in Wales is also undergoing a change in approach to the design and delivery of services to the client that is appropriate to the changing needs of clients and responsive to the public service agenda.  Much of what impacts on CAB clients in Wales derive from the models of public services being adopted in Westminster as well as those driven by the WAG and there is a need to account for the variation of experience of policy across the two government approaches.

We will continue to improve access to the service:

• By improving our gateway and telephone services to free up more resources to deliver in-depth advice
• By developing services which are joined up with other providers
• By keeping pace with technology
• Through a service-wide Access Strategy

We will respond to our users to deliver citizens-centred services:

• By focussing on those in greatest need while delivering service to all
• By developing our role as a first point of contact on discrimination
• By extending our financial capability work
• By improving consultation and communications
• By building a more diverse work-force

We will improve our influence on policy:

• By strengthening our gathering of client evidence
• By improved feedback to policy makers on the basis of the evidence
• By working in partnership with others to campaign and to develop policy solutions

We will strengthen the Citizens Advice service’s capacity to deliver:

• By strengthening bureaux governance and management
• By increasing and developing our volunteers
• By improving communications and consultation

Equitable Access

2.10  Citizens Advice Cymru’s Vision is one where every person in Wales is able to enforce their legal and human rights including campaigning for change where existing rights are inadequate.

2.11  Equitable Access means providing a service that:

• Is participation and client led
• Is sufficient to meet need
• Is funded sustainably
• Is accessible geographically and at times to suit clients
• Plans an appropriate response/approach to Partner organisations
• Gears resources on those most in need, which is defined by:
• the urgency of the problem
• the capability of the individual
• the degree of detriment faced
• Fairness - even if the above are not met if the issue is blatantly unfair, for example, where discrimination is identified in cases.

2.12  In order to achieve this, Citizens Advice Cymru is committed to achieving the creation across Wales of a strong and sustainable bureau network which provides excellent and accessible advice services and which is respected, valued and sought out by policy makers and funders as well as valued by clients and communities.

2.13  There remain areas of Wales with inadequate core funding and consequently little capacity to develop new and additional funding streams.  Specialist advice is still inadequate to meet demand throughout Wales, the gaps identified in the field of employment advice have not been filled and where services are delivered some bureaux are still in the position of operating waiting lists for clients. Telephone services continue to struggle to meet the demand. The expectations and needs of clients for advice continues to be frustrated as short-term projects have to close at the end of their funding term.

2.14  It has been acknowledged by both the Welsh Assembly Government and Welsh Local Government Association that equitable access to services was clearly linked to the wider public services agenda for Wales as described in Making the Connections.

2.15  We believe that the development of an equitable, sufficient and sustainable funding base encompassing both Welsh Assembly and local government would allow the development of an effective and efficient service which would have the capacity to sustain a 'rights-based’ Wales as part of the Citizens Centred approach.

2.16  The challenge is to deliver the outcomes needed by the citizens of Wales. The rights based approach and the partnerships will be valuable and valued when it is accompanied by a demonstrable commitment to ensuring that vital information, advice and representation services are sufficient and sustainable.

Current Funding Pattern

2.17  Citizens Advice Cymru and each Citizens Advice Bureau are charities reliant on funding from a variety of sources.  The local Citizens Advice Bureaux services in Wales are core funded through grants from local government, Welsh Assembly Government funded sources and through contracts with the Legal Services Commission and from other sources:

2.18  There is an increase in overall funding of 6% compared to the last year to £8,261,626.  However, there were two completely new sources of funding in the year, Financial Inclusion Fund (Treasury) and funding for discrimination advice from the then Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), a total of over £923,000.

2.19  The true comparative picture is therefore one where the funding has increased by only 2%, roughly in line with inflation.  Local authority funding has increased by only 2% and the other major funder, the Legal Services Commission (LSC) has reduced funding to bureaux in Wales by 20%.

2.20  The table at Annex 1 provides a breakdown of funding at each local authority level with the Local Authority and LSC as a percentage.  Further breakdown of costs, for example, local authority allocation of funding for core Bureaux costs and a comparison of pence per capita could also be provided on request.  

Enquiries and clients

2.21  During 2006/07 Citizens Advice Bureaux in Wales helped people deal with 281,219 problems.  Of these 95,674 enquiries related to benefit and tax credits (34 per cent) and 91,368 related to debt (32 per cent); 19,501 enquiries relating to employment; 15,536 housing enquiries and 12,481 legal enquiries. It is significant that bureaux advised on 1,264 discrimination issues during the year.  There was and overall 10% increase in client issues over the previous year and in addition the visits to our public information site, www.adviceguide.org.uk increased by 44%.

2.22  Bureaux in Wales raise the income of about one-third of their clients. This is done is a number of ways but most typically by ensuring that people receive the benefits to which they are entitled and by helping with claims for compensation. The income can be regular, weekly payments or a one-off payment.  In 2006/07 bureaux helped to increase client’s income by at least £11,735,185 (total reported from 60 per cent of Bureaux).  By increasing people’s incomes, their spending power is increased, which is important for the local economy. The New Economics Foundation estimates that income of this sort should be trebled to give a measure of its real effect on the local economy across Wales, the equivalent of over £35million.

2.23  Bureaux in Wales helped their clients with over £76,378,310 of personal debt (total reported from 60 per cent of Bureaux), actively negotiating with their creditors to alleviate their situation and helping them to avoid homelessness, improve their health and well-being as well as allowing them to cope with their financial problems.

Funding Principles

2.24  It is vital for the sustainability of current services that the principles of the WAG Code of Practice for Funding the Voluntary Sector are fully implemented when there is commissioning of services from the voluntary sector - particularly the principle of "security of funding”, with a commitment to a 3-year core funding and clear baselines for subsequent years and also the principle of "fair funding levels” where increase of inflation and growth can be built into bids.    

2.25  We would urge the WAG in particular to act as an exemplar in this area. Funding from the WAG for the Better Advice: Better Health project (delivering advice in primary healthcare settings) has remained static with no inflation increase since 2001 and will remain so for the foreseeable future. This does raise considerable concern around the sustainability of our services, which have proven to be effective and has provided a high level of return in terms of income and general well-being outcomes for clients.  Our most recent statistics show that in the time October 2001 - March 2007, Better Advice: Better Health has seen over 21,000 NEW clients, helped over 41,000 clients in total with over 71,000 new issues and generated confirmed welfare benefit gains of over £22.5 Million into Wales - from an investment of £4.2million from the WAG.  Had it not been for supplementary funding from the Healthy Minds @ Work partnership through the EQUAL+ programme we would have lost at least one surgery service in every local authority area. This funding has now come to an end and a reduction in the level of the Better Advice, Better Health service will have to be implemented if no additional funding is identified by April 2008.  This has been an issue that we have been discussing with the WAG for a number of years and is an example where the full application of the Funding Code would seem prudent in strategic terms.

2.26  We would urge the WAG and WLGA to ensure that local authorities are pressed to adopt a Code of Funding which mirrors the best examples of support provided by the WAG.  There is a clear discrepancy in the relative level of local authority support for CAB services across Wales, which is determined by local relationships and also the strategic value placed on CAB services by local authorities.  

2.27  Funding of advice services need to take into account the importance of providing independent advice, which is congruent with the principles of citizen-centred services.  There is a greater social risk when local authorities place an emphasis on commissioning in-house advice services.  In many such scenarios, independent organisations will be denied adequate funding to pursue their responsibility for challenging statutory services where there is a service failure.  For example, the CAB Service works in partnership with others where we have converging agendas but retain independence to pursue additional needs and to comment on the impacts of policy and practice in Wales on our clients and the wider community, for example in the field of housing benefit administration and irresponsible practice by social landlords.  This issue is fundamental to the impact of advice provision on the citizens of Wales.

2.28  We have further concerns about the lack of clarity in establishing responsibility for the funding of services and also which services are deemed appropriate to fund under certain programmes.   For example, we have continuous and serious concerns about the position in which individual Citizens Advice Bureaux are placed in seeking funding for community based activities under the Communities First programme.  There is an urgent need to review the specific exclusion of CAB advice services as an eligible cost for Communities First funding under current guidance.  We remain of the opinion that this position is based on a grave miss-understanding of the role that individual Bureaux play in their own communities and the central role they have played in local Communities First partnerships.  We also believe that this position is based on a fundamental misunderstanding on the difference between individual Citizens Advice Bureaux and the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux Wales (operating under the name of Citizens Advice Cymru).

Legal Services Commission (LSC) and Community Legal Services (CLS)

2.28  Given the substantial proportion of funding that Bureaux in Wales receive from the LSC to deliver legal aid contracts, any funding for advice within the voluntary sector needs to take account of the effect of the new contracting regime and the effect of the existing blueprint for delivering Community Legal Services in Wales.  

2.29  The new LSC Unified Contract is beginning to affect the way in which not for profit contractors like Citizens Advice Bureaux are paid and how the LSC organises and manages its financial relationship with advice providers.  As it stands, the new system pays a fixed fee per case without sufficiently taking into account the complexity of the case or of client needs.  Local Citizens Advice Bureaux will either be forced to reduce case times by being forced to restrict work on more complex cases or clients, or will have to subsidise legal help services from other funds.

2.30  Furthermore, the LSC are, in the long term, committed to the concept of contracting with fewer, larger suppliers - who would have the capacity to deliver advice across a number of advice categories. The streamlining of suppliers will be problematic if the LSC fulfils its intention to move to joint commissioning with local authorities with competitive tendering for fixed price contracts.  This would pose a realistic danger of many local independent advice providers being excluded from LSC contracts which currently make up a large proportion of their funding.  More importantly, this loss of provision would have a cumulative impact on these providers’ ability to fulfil their generic advice service requirements within the community.  In this respect, local authorities will be hard pressed to find ways of funding advice which would not exclude large number of clients which form part of their strategic plans, particularly under Community Strategy and Service Plans.

2.31  It is a major concern for Citizens Advice Bureaux that funds which are provided to deliver core services will be reduced or lost completely into centrally managed funds which is earmarked for the proposed CLS procurement areas in Wales.  Local authority core funding provides for a minimum level of services delivered by Bureaux, which includes organisational costs (management, supervision, quality assurance) which goes beyond funding purely for advice work.  These are in effect infrastructure costs, which:

• Support other services that are essential to delivering generic services including LSC contracts.
• Act as a platform to allow bureaux to attract further funding. For example, project work to meet the needs of local communities and additional specialist casework that is currently not funded by the LSC.  
• develop volunteering
• provide skills training for future employment
• help develop local communities through networking, education and training
• enable Citizens Advice Bureaux to act as first point of contact for help on all types of discrimination and on non 'legal’ issues
• To generate the ability to attract further funding for example project work to meet the needs of local communities.

2.32  There is no guarantee that this essential element of LA funds will be protected or ring-fenced within the proposed procurement areas, which threatens to undermine universal access for local clients. The potential shifting of resources could place local advice agencies at risk of facing additional costs together with reduced capacity. There is a pressing need to raise awareness amongst existing local partnerships so that they understand the need to protect the core service before any consideration for pooling resources. We strongly suggest that the WAG and Local Authorities (including the WLGA) take the lead role in their partnership with the LSC to ensure that commissioning is guided to take account of these issues.   

Campaigning and Social Policy

2.33  It is fundamental that the future funding of the voluntary sector, particularly in the advice sector ensures the sufficient resource for Social Policy and campaigning that is fundamental to the role of independent advice service such as Citizens Advice Bureaux (it is an equal aim for our organisation) and no resources earmarked for this activity.  This function is about proposing solutions as well as solving problems. It seems a waste of resources in handling say, 50 individual cases on the same issue, when a little social policy work could eradicate the issue in question. At the same time 50 individuals have experienced some form of distress which could have been avoided.  Social Policy epitomises citizen centred services in that it can resolve issues before many people even experience them. As Social Policy work takes effect and resolves issues on a national scale, resources can be maximised as they are focussed on evolving advice and information needs.

2.34  Citizens Advice Cymru has recently published a social policy evidence report on the administration of Housing Benefit (HB) across Wales.  The Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh Local Government Association have recognised this as a generic issue and local action by Bureaux in terms of engaging with Housing Departments and Housing Benefit departments will help introduce best practice and bring about a step change in the administration of HB in Wales, which should help address the homelessness agenda and related resource issues such as paying for failed tenancies.  Other examples of local liaison work by Bureaux include engaging with Jobcentre+ offices where there are deficiencies in the public services, particularly for vulnerable clients e.g. the administration of the Social Fund.

2.35  It is also fundamental to the future role of Citizens Advice Cymru, as a national organisation in Wales, to be able to make a sufficient contribution in the devolved context as part of civic society in Wales, particularly given the advent of a new civic and legal context under the Government of Wales (2006) Act

2.36   Working with the National Assembly for Wales gives us the opportunity to influence change in policy and legislation through our social policy work, to an extent that may not be possible in the rest of the UK.  For example, Citizens Advice Cymru has been able to influence change in Wales in the following areas.

• The Unhealthy Charges (2001) report formed the basis of the debate that led to the policy to introduce free prescriptions across Wales
• The Uniform Failure (2002) report provided the evidence to introduce a statutory school uniform grant scheme across Wales for children from low- income families entering secondary school.

2.37  It is also vitally important that Citizens Advice Cymru sufficiently resourced to provide an adequate policy response given the additional powers to legislate accrued by the National Assembly for Wales and the WAG.  We have already identified areas within our policy work that could provide the basis for Legislative Competence Orders and subsequent Measure, for example in dealing with retaliatory evictions and planning the location of cash machines.

2.38  However, there are concerns about our capacity to deal with existing work in this area and how we will be able to respond in the future.  This has become more acute following a review of services by Citizens Advice (England and Wales) in response to grant in aid reduction from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).  We would ask the Committee in particular, to facilitate a debate within the National Assembly and with the WAG on this issue with the view to increase dialogue with BERR on the future funding of Citizens Advice Cymru in this context.  The future planning of resources should take into account the huge democratic mandate that Citizens Advice Cymru has, least of all in terms of clients (as citizens) and casework but also in light of the Convention on a Referendum for primary law making powers.  

Added Value

2.39  It is vitally important to take into account the wider impact of Citizens Advice Bureaux on individuals and communities and also to acknowledge the added value that the holistic advice service provided by a CAB.

2.40  The CAB service provides significant benefits that are added value in many ways by:

• Raising income within the Community
• Bringing in money which is spent locally
• Bringing in additional income to the local economy via funders
• Saving the economy money
• Saving money for local authorities
• Contributing to Local Society
• Being a community-led agency run by and for local people
• Contributing to Social Cohesion
• Influencing the policy agenda
• Contributing to local planning and participation

2.41  Citizens Advice Cymru have commissioned a PhD in partnership with Bangor University as part of an ESF project to measure the impact of CAB advice on the health and socio-economic outcomes for individuals and the wider community.  The aims of this research study are to:

• Provide a detailed analysis of the impact and outcomes of independent CAB advice on individuals and households
• Quantify the wider economic and social impact of these outcomes on local  communities
• Use this evidence to inform service planners of the Citizens Advice service’s role and value in the provision of public services to the citizen
• Produce a prototype data set of information that would enable a Citizens Advice Bureau to audit its activity more completely against Local Authority, Wales and UK social/economic objectives.  This will be adopted as the first stage of the development of a nationwide audit of the role of advice giving in national policy.  The project will add to capacity in this area and therefore have a legacy for future development by providing an updated system of accounting for the advice sector.

3.  Summary and Recommendations

Summary

3.1  We believe that the development of an equitable, sufficient and sustainable funding base encompassing both Welsh Assembly and local government would allow the development of an effective and efficient service which would have the capacity to sustain a 'rights-based’ Wales as part of the Citizens Centred approach.  It is proposed that the following pattern is followed and that the Assembly, local government and the Citizens Advice Cymru jointly:

• Establish and agree the principles for service delivery;
• Establish and agree core service need;
• Establish and agree additional and discretionary service need;
• Agree the resource required
• Agree the appropriate source for that funding

3.2  The challenge is to deliver the outcomes needed by the citizens of Wales. We have spent positive time and energy during recent years with our funders and our partners and working co-operatively to seek to influence policy on behalf of our clients.  We have been presenting evidence to make the case for sufficient and equitable access to essential advice services, which citizens desperately need across Wales. The rights based approach and the partnerships will be valuable and valued when it is accompanied by a demonstrable commitment to ensuring that vital information, advice and representation services are sufficient and sustainable.

Recommendations:

We believe that the Welsh Assembly Government in partnership with the Welsh Local Government Association should provide leadership in developing mechanisms for ensuring that there is sufficient spending allocation, including direct funding from the Welsh Assembly Government, to enable the appropriate level of service where the effect is to provide equity of access across Wales.  

We strongly suggest that the WAG and Local Authorities (including the WLGA) take the lead role in their partnership with the LSC to ensure that commissioning of Community Legal Services in Wales are guided by a rights-based agenda with the principle of citizen-centred services at its core.   

The WAG should support and deliver funding for social policy and campaign work within the voluntary sector, which is vital for improved public service delivery and enforcing the rights-based agenda.

Annex 1

Funding to Wals CABx - UA Funding as % of total