Advice Workforce features at London Funders’ Festival of Learning
Advice Workforce Development Fund partners were able to showcase their initial learning from the programme as part of London Funders’ Festival of Learning last week.
Programme participants gathered with delegates at A&O Shearman’s offices in the heart of the city of London, to share reflections on the topic of: “What we’ve learnt from collaboratively changing systems”.
The session was chaired by Inclusion London’s CEO, Tracey Lazard, and featured input from a range of partners including co-chair of the programme’s task-and-finish group looking at advice sector Pay and Conditions, Julie Bishop (of Law Centres Network), and the programme Learning Partner, Phil Jew (Advice Services Alliance), who spoke to ASA’s Advising Londoners research (2020) which had paved the way to the programme’s creation. The event was free-flowing and conversational in nature, with additional contributions coming from programme funders, Steering Group members and Propel-funded projects.
Reflections included:
- The importance of reimbursing voluntary sector participants for their participation across all parts of the programme, including Steering Group and task-and-finish groups;
- The certainty of (longer-term) funding being fundamental to organisations’ abilities to recruit, train and retain staff;
- Agencies have found that by working together, they can recruit and retrain staff more effectively, particularly those who have lived experience of advice issues
- The governance behind collaborative working cannot be underestimated – including partnership agreements, and a shared understanding of mission, focus and what “systems change” means to everyone involved;
- Difficulty in addressing or measuring systems change work when it means something different to different orgs/individuals;
- Agreement that – even though defining, having a shared understanding of, and measuring systems change was challenging – the work of the Advice Workforce Development Fund programme was a good example of attempting to change systems – especially with its “diverse ecosystem”.
The AWDF programme is in its first year of delivery, so much of the learning described is still emerging. London Funders’ Festival of Learning is an annual event, and we are looking forward to sharing our insights into working collaboratively to influence systems change in 2025.
If you are interested in learning more from the event, including receiving slides or notes, please contact us via the contact form here, or email programme manager Chris Scutt at Christopher@llst.org.uk
