This report presents the findings of a local, qualitative legal needs study in Coventry - a collaborative project between the University of Warwick School of Law, Central England Law Centre and Advicenow. It focuses on the experiences of marginalised groups and the role of community organisations (trusted intermediaries) in supporting them to access civil and social justice. It explores legal needs emerging from March 2020 to the present, capturing experiences as the country has moved from one crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, to another, the ‘cost-of-living’ crisis.
The study demonstrates how engaging a wider ecosystem of legal support (trusted intermediaries collaborating with specialist legal and advice services) to help people recognise and deal with problems earlier is crucial to addressing unmet legal need and to tackling law-related problems before they escalate and multiply.
Key findings
- People experience complex clusters of problems. There were more than 130 law-related problems among 35 participants. Most had experienced between four and six interrelated problems in a period of 30-36 months. The most common problems were welfare benefits and housing problems. Clusters were linked to underlying financial precarity and poverty, disability and changes in health, and family breakdown. A majority of problems were either unresolved or had poor outcomes. Living on very low incomes and struggling to make ends meet meant that problems quickly led to people being unable to pay for food or heating, deteriorating health and even losing their homes when unresolved. Many problems were unidentified including entitlement to disability-related benefits and social care, and employment problems.
“Problems kept happening, coming from nowhere, I don’t know why” (S)
- Multiple systemic issues and barriers triggered legal problems or made them worse. Poor first-stage decision-making, misinformation, delays and dismissive and hostile attitudes, particularly in relation to disability benefits, social housing and asylum, were common. Digital poverty and deficits in digital skills contributed to delays and mistakes in legal and administrative processes.
People often don’t take action because they take the word of more powerful actors or they are focused on survival. Inaction was common. Participants described not knowing what to do or thinking that taking action would be too difficult or not worth it. Power imbalances influenced inaction, and participants accepted decisions by more powerful actors, such as employers, landlords, and government agencies.
Inaction was linked to the cascade effects of multiple problems and feeling overwhelmed. Participants often focused limited energy on necessities and survival or the most pressing problem in a cluster.
Young people and people with mental ill health most commonly did not take action.
Inaction resulted in significantly poor outcomes including homelessness, loss of income or employment, or serious health decline.
“The people that we are seeing are firefighting, their main priority is to get through the day with food” (Coventry Foodbank).
Handling things alone was also common. This involved trying to find information, repeated attempts to negotiate with other actors, making multiple applications (for housing assistance for example) and making complaints.
Participants described how they had been getting on with things or taking practical steps to improve the situation, but usually without taking advantage of available rights. This tended to result in unnecessarily long struggles to resolve the problem and outcomes that fell short of what they were entitled to.
Levels of legal knowledge were very low. Few had the ability to identify legal issues. When participants did not take any action, this was at least partially a consequence of not recognising the problem.
Some people had partial knowledge of their rights, but they didn't know the processes they should use to secure them.
Many participants struggled with the skills needed to plan, organise and keep track of events, often due to disabilities and long-term health conditions. Most participants discussed limited digital skills and confidence too.
“I don’t know about legal rights or what to do or where to go” (E)
- Trusted intermediaries make a difference and help people access advice. The support of trusted intermediaries was often a key factor in participants taking any form of action. They played a significant role in both identifying problems and supporting people to deal with them, particularly benefits and debt problems. Those who most readily accessed advice had done so with the help of intermediaries.
“The only people I have to turn to are the people here, where regularly I come here and I’ll be moaning about one thing and another. But I find that they don’t judge me, if I want to moan I can moan, if I want to cry I can cry” (N).
Conclusions and recommendations
We need to tackle the root causes of unmet legal need in marginalised communities and support people to access help at the earliest opportunity.
- Reduce systemic drivers of legal need that disproportionately impact marginalised groups and perpetuate disadvantage.
- Build the ecosystem of legal support. This includes trusted intermediaries, generalist and specialist advice, and high quality digital information resources and guidance. Meeting the legal needs of people who are marginalised means recognising the integral role played by each of these different forms of legal support and reversing investment flows to focus on bottom-up, collaborative community-based solutions.
- Develop collaborative local rights-based cultures. This includes recognising that problems often have a legal dimension, supporting intervention at the earliest opportunity and prevention where possible, and aiming to support long-term sustainable solutions and community cohesion.
- Build community legal capability, both at the individual and community level. Increasing support to help people recognise and deal with problems earlier, lies at the heart of strengthening trusted intermediary capacity to participate in the ecosystem of legal support. Trusted intermediaries are a diverse group and may include community organisations, healthcare workers, and many others.
Methodology
The research was co-produced with seven trusted intermediary organisations in Coventry (Carriers of Hope, Coventry Foodbank, Feeding Coventry, Foleshill Women’s Training, Kairos Women Working Together, Rethink Mental Illness, and St Basil’s). A group of staff and stakeholders from each organisation were interviewed, and a sample of thirty-five individuals they have supported and who have struggled to deal with law-related problems. The individual participants in the study reflect groups that the organisations support, many of whom are often absent from large-scale legal needs studies.
Thanks
The authors would like to thank members of the advisory group including Nimrod BenCnaan, Julie Bishop, Naomi Creutzfeldt, Catrina Denvir, Deirdre Duffy, Lois Gander, Rosie Harding, Naomi Madden, Alan Markey, Julie Mathews, Vanessa Munro, Edward Sharpe and Valerie De Souza, with particular thanks to James Harrison. We would also like to thank Leonara Catuara for research assistance.
