Building the Workforce Capacity of London’s Advice Sector

The Advice Workforce Development Fund (AWDF) is proud to be launching its new report, Building the Workforce Capacity of London's Advice Sector, which explores five key issues central to building the long-term resilience of London's advice sector.  

The report shows that the sector is under sustained pressure, with services of all sizes facing difficulties in retaining skilled staff, keeping pace with demand, and maintaining quality. It also highlights work that has successfully met these challenges. Considering challenges and successes, the report sets out several key recommendations to build sustainability and resilience for the advice sector, funders, and umbrella organisations.  

The five key issues explored in the report are:  

Advice agencies of all sizes face unprecedented challenges in filling adviser, caseworker, and supervisor posts. There is a shortage of staff with appropriate skills and experience, and the research identified the lack of clear pathways into advice work as a critical issue, particularly as fewer people feel able to volunteer due to the cost of living.

Recent initiatives, including “grow-your-own” programmes, in which smaller organisations have recruited and trained advisers from underrepresented communities, point to promising ways forward for the sector as a whole.

The section starts on page 19.

There is high staff turnover across the sector. This is partly due to the demands of advice workers’ roles, where managing heavy caseloads and supporting vulnerable clients can lead to burnout. Moreover, these roles are often poorly remunerated and offer limited opportunities for career progression.  

Some organisations have seen success in improving retention through piloting, upskilling, and progression support. This has included intensive support to enable advice workers from Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations to progress into supervisory roles, and upskilling workers from community-led organisations through partnerships with Law Centres to develop meaningful career progression pathways. 

This section starts on page 24. 

The report demonstrates that training is key to helping staff build the skills and knowledge needed to work with vulnerable clients, who often present with complex legal problems. While excellent training is available, it is fragmented, resource-intensive, and hard to find at the right time.  

One solution identified is investment in carefully planned and targeted training programmes that work with, and listen to, smaller, under-pressure organisations. Such work, however, needs to be underpinned by broader action across the sector to ensure that training pathways are clearly signposted and coordinated across different providers, and that training is accessible and relevant for everyone.  

This section starts on page 28. 

Peer support for advice sector workers, whether it is formal or informal, improves resilience, practice quality, and wellbeing. The research found that it is highly valued and low cost for advice workers at all career levels. However, the pressures on advice workers and agencies can make peer support difficult to sustain. High staff turnover makes peer support frameworks fragile; lack of funding can mean that peer support is deprioritised in favour of meeting targets; and workers may struggle to maintain the networks and structures that enable peer support, or even to find time to take part. 

Several peer support networks have shown positive results in making peer support available without putting undue pressure on any one organisation. 

This section starts on page 34.

Supervision is central to good-quality advice and staff development. Supervision in advice agencies helps to develop workers’ understanding of relevant law, capacity to secure remedies for clients, and knowledge of risk and procedures. However, many services find it difficult to sustain, both due to demands on their own time and funding and to shortages of appropriate supervisors.  

The research has found that increased coordination across the advice sector can lessen the burden of securing and maintaining supervision for advice agencies. This includes, for example, using simple, replicable tools such as frameworks and handbooks to ensure consistency across and within agencies. 

This section starts on page 38.

The report also addresses the specific challenges faced by specific sections of the advice sector: 

  • Equity-focused and smaller advice organisations (including Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations, refugee and migrant groups, and community-led agencies) – page 45 of the report 

The report sets out several potential sector-wide solutions, emphasising:  

  • Immediate and short-term actions that agencies and networks can take now, including:
  • Developing and using shared templates for supervision, training, peer support and other staff development and retention goals 
  • A commitment from both agencies and funders to protect time for supervision, training, and peer review through workplace planning and funding agreements 
  • Building system conditions that enable sustainable workforce development, including:
  • The development of a sector-wide Advice Strategy that would set minimum standards for workforce development and retention for advice agencies and funders  
  • Developing shared infrastructure to reduce duplication and extend access,including:
  • The development of an advice workforce development hub to oversee, coordinate, and deliver training, supervision, peer support, and recruitment 

If implemented by stakeholders across the sector, the recommendations of the AWDF’s Workforce Capacity Report have the potential to create a resilient and sustainable advice workforce in London. The report provides a rigorous evidence base for understanding the problems facing the sector, alongside a package of solutions targeted not only at advice agencies, but also at funders, umbrella agencies and networks, and training providers.  

The Workforce Capacity Report is part of wider work by the AWDF to find tangible solutions to the problems facing the advice sector workforce in London. The AWDF has brought together advice agency workers and leaders from across the sector, ranging from small equity-focused organisations to national bodies, to work towards real change.  This includes research into pay and conditions across the sector and staff wellbeing. 

Click here to read our previous reports.