Clients who call the Civil Legal Advice (CLA) helpline with a family issue will now be directed to face-to-face providers from 1 September.
Callers to the CLA helpline with family issues will no longer be referred to specialist telephone advice from 1 September. Instead, they will be offered alternative face-to-face support arrangements with their nearest family providers.
The new family process will involve an initial “means and merits” assessment conducted by the operator, to provide an early, initial case determination. Then, if the case is in scope, and clients are financially eligible, they will be directed to their three closest providers. If not, they will continue to be signposted elsewhere for possible help.
Although this is a change from the current referral process for specialist telephone legal advice on family issues, it will not affect access to family advice. Clients who qualify for legal aid can continue to get face-to-face help from family practitioners with legal aid contracts, including over the telephone.
Other areas of telephone advice provided by the CLA in England and Wales, such as education, discrimination, debt, and housing work will continue as normal.
The change has been implemented because, according to the CLA, more than 90% of family cases are only reaching the determination stage and the service is not delivering substantive legal advice in most cases. Instead the service is mostly being used to determine scope and financial eligibility for legal aid.
As a result of the decision, changes have been made to the Standard Civil Contract 2018, following consultation with representative bodies. Amendments will apply from 1 September to the following:
- Support the referral of clients from the CLA operator service to a face-to-face family provider.
- Require face-to-face providers to carry out full scope and eligibility assessments of the client’s issue.
- Give face-to-face providers the option of using remote methods of communication where the client has been referred to them by the CLA operator service.
Details of the contract amendments can be found here.
