Social welfare [law] advice provision during the pandemic in England and Wales: a conceptual framework

An ambitious reform programme in the UK to digitalise the justice system has been underway since 2016. The recent report carried out for the Administrative Justice Council (AJC) by the authors Digitisation andAccessingJustice in theCommunity, described how prepared advice providers were for giving digital assistance concerning welfare benefits, and found that organisations were unable to meet the demand for services across all levels of social welfare law, and that there was a high level of demand for digital assistance. This paper then adds data from the follow up Welfare Advice Survey carried out for the JUSTICE/AJC benefits reform working party by the authors, which examines the technical capability of the advice sector to provide remote social welfare advice delivery after the onset of the pandemic (see fns 1 and 3 below). The paper describes how advice providers have been working during the first seven months of the pandemic in 2020 and how the migration to remote advice delivery has changed their services and impacted on their clients. A conceptual framework of needs is then developed and offered as a lens through which to think about the new sets of demands on advisers and clients.