What we’ve learned in Year 1 of ILTA
A year ago, we launched the Improving Lives Through Advice (ILTA) programme in partnership with The National Lottery Community Fund. The programme is a 5-year core costs grant programme designed to support the delivery of free legal advice to marginalised people and communities across England.
Improving Lives Through Advice is a great example of the power of connection and partnership. It’s important that as funders we challenge ourselves on what support we can offer beyond core funding, and the Access to Justice Foundation continue to demonstrate that through their approach.
To help communities tackle their challenges and fulfil their potential, it’s crucial to make bolder and longer term change in society. This programme reaches many of the people most affected by poverty, disadvantage or discrimination and helps them find their feet. ILTA is helping to create a fairer, stronger and more resilient future for communities across England.
We have awarded core funding to 59 organisations which will enable them to meet increasing demand for their services amid a picture of mounting social and economic need.
Together, we aim to understand how the multi-year funding can support organisations to sustain and improve access to legal advice in this challenging setting as well as make organisations more resilient so they can continue to meet the needs of communities.
What is so valuable is having a 5-year core cost grant. It means we can use our resources where they are most needed. The Access to Justice Foundation have been really understanding about changes in our organisational structure, supporting us in skilling up the whole organisation and building up to long-term projects. We can feel confident to start exploring bigger problems - There are people’s lives at stake.
Demonstrating impact and sharing learning
People, places, and communities most in need of help and support often face the most significant barriers in accessing the assistance they need. Not being able to identify legal issues, combined with confusion on where to go to get support means important issues can quickly escalate until they reach crisis point.
Legal advice can positively transform this process. Our funded partners regularly share with us how legal advice can take their beneficiaries out of crisis, improves lives, health, and keep families in their homes. However, while our understanding about the impact of advice is strong, being able to evidence this has been challenging.
In order to address this challenge, we’ve dedicated the first 12 months of this programme to developing a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) process that combines our collaborative approach to relationship building with our funded partners with best practice in proportionate data collection in line with the IVAR open and trusting grant-making principles.
Working closely with Naveed Somani, the programme’s independent evaluator, and our funded partners, we’ve embarked on a journey to refine our approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
So far, we have:
- Conducted a literature review of the diverse methodologies and frameworks advice organisations employ to measure outcomes and impact.
- Delivered a report on the opportunities and challenges of measuring legal advice outcomes based on the literature review, highlighting the value of taking a collaborative and learning focused approach to overcoming challenges in measuring justice.
- Engaged our funded partners via focus groups, online workshops, and a pilot period to develop a framework that ensures we capture their organisational impact beyond numbers.
- Established an Evaluation and Learning Group, enabling us to collaborate with other experts in this space, including The National Lottery Community Fund, the Nuffield Foundation, the Ministry of Justice, and the Greater London Authority, ensuring we maximise the opportunities to share evidence and learning over the 5-year programme.
We began rolling out our approach at the end of March and will be sharing what we’re learning as we continue to listen and evolve the approach over the programme period.
We spent a long time developing our approach. By taking this extended lead-in and co-producing the framework with the funded organisations, we’ve achieved a well-informed approach that helps validate the core funding model whilst remaining lean, focusing on the most meaningful insights so that organisations can demonstrate their impact without being overwhelmed by reporting.
Support beyond core costs funding
In addition to evidencing the importance of core-costs funding we also appreciate that as funders we can do more to support organisational resilience.
The programme is complimented by a Funder Plus offer, delivered by the Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG) Management and Leadership Hub, which has so far delivered:
- One-to-one engagement with each of our funded partners to identify their unique organisational needs for additional support.
- Opened up spaced for funded partners to enrol on the Management and Leadership Programme, designed specifically for managers in the non-profit specialist legal and advice sector.
- The launch of the ILTA Funded Partner Support Programme, including an online resource hub, which will provide training opportunities, peer learning, and communities of interest in key areas of development.
Through initiatives like the Management and Leadership Programme, we support effective management, leadership, and governance which is critical to maintaining and building a resilient, accessible, and high-quality specialist advice sector. Management is not the only ingredient when it comes to a vibrant advice ecosystem, but it is one of the most important. Feedback has demonstrated the impact of funder plus work time and time again.
Our relationship with our funded partners is at the centre of our work and we’re dedicated to listening and fostering best practice. We’ll be sharing more on our learning journey, on our website and through social media.
We would welcome feedback and shared experience from other funders or collaboration on our new approach, please get in touch with us at grants@atjf.org.uk to share your thoughts.
Thanks to National Lottery players, Improving Lives Through Advice is supported by £30 million from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK.
