AWDF launches first Learning Report

We have huge pleasure in launching the Advice Workforce Development Fund’s first ever Learning Report.

The report, produced by programme Learning Partner, Advice Services Alliance, draws out the key learning from the first 7-15 months of the eight Propel-funded projects’ operations.

The Learning Partner worked with the eight projects to establish a theory of change framework, which resulted in the following potential impacts being identified: replicable and scalable workforce provisions that will be invested in, funded, and sustained; improved supply, diversity, and quality of advice for Londoners; improved reach of advice services; systemic changes are made to support advice agencies to overcome workforce challenges; and resources and evidence to support further workforce initiatives.

Principal investigator, Phil Jew, said:

“Advice Services Alliance is delighted to be the learning partner for this very important workforce programme, addressing a major strategic challenge for advice agencies that we raised in our 2020 report Advising Londoners.

“What we’ve seen so far are some great examples of replicable and scalable solutions and we’ve heard instructive feedback from trainees and apprentices. Our learning has led us to make some initial recommendations, which we look forward to talking forward with the programme’s participants and funders.”

Key areas of learning within the report (alongside examples and recommendations) included:

• The need for more public and centralised information and marketing about the advice sector, training, entry, and development opportunities.
• Clear evidence supporting the assumption that inter-agency collaboration aids understanding of workforce needs and best practice.
• The importance of infrastructure, capacity-building, and centralised resources for workforce initiatives.
• That community agency partnerships and community engagement could help to improve workforce diversity and representation of people with lived experience of advice issues.
• The importance of flexibility, accessibility, and reasonable adjustment, for example in recruitment and training.
• That peer-support networks were useful to build an advice sector community.
• Sustainability was in question – the programme is funding a number of time-limited roles, but what happens at the end of the two or three years of funding (the report offers suggestions)?
• Funding lengths and levels.

We invite you to take a look through the full report here, and a summary of the report can be viewed here.

We are grateful to all of the excellent projects and their participants for contributing to the programme’s first ever report, and to Propel funders including the City Bridge Foundation and the Trust for London, the National Lottery Community Fund – and especially the Paul Hamlyn Foundation whose funding is enabling the Learning Partner’s work to happen.