1. Good Practice and Partnership Team
Early Action
Asylum Guides
Frontline Immigration Advice Project
Brief History of the team
What projects the team is currently running

2. Frontline Immigration Advice Project
To ensure provision of free, high quality immigration advice to meet those needs, both through:
Training and accreditation
Partnership and collaboration
Development of on-line tools

3. Headline Achievements of FIAP
Trained 231 individuals at L1
Trained 40 individuals at L2 Asylum
Worked with 115 frontline organisations
18 organisations have registered with OISC
66 individuals have registered at L1 or L2
274 members of the RALTG

4. Provision of immigration advice
What is immigration advice?
Activity
Refugee Action Awareness Training
Registering with the OISC

5. Why would you provide immigration advice?
2012 LAPSO legislation has drastically undermined the provision of immigration advice across the UK
Immigration has been taken completely out of legal aid scope with the exception of initial asylum claims and merit-test appeals
mapping shows that over half of legal aid providers in the areas of asylum and immigration were lost between 2005 and 2018.
The drop in not for profit providers was even more staggering, at 64%.
In March 2018 there were 26 local authority areas with more than 100 people seeking asylum where there was no local legal aid provision.

6. Understanding your environment

7. What works well for accreditation
A genuine understanding of why you need to do it
Great leadership
Peer to peer support
Capacity in staffing
Whole organisation investment in the registration

8. Potential Problems with accreditation
Management changes
High staff/volunteer turnover
Capacity
Multiple competing needs
Changes in funding environment
Know your limits!

9. Models of Immigration Advice in Charities
Partnerships with solicitors/law centre
Referral partnerships
Offering surgeries within your organisation
University pro-bono law clinics
Deepening relationships with universities
Using volunteers
Using paying models to support humanitarian work
Using grants to support legal aid contracts
Citizens Advice Bureaux and law centre

10. Solicitors/Legal Aid Partners
Existing Pressures
Legal aid cuts
Lower fees
Pressure to work on out of scope advice
Time pressures
How can we help?
Improving referrals: evidence of means, preparing files, using your registration to prepare/support the case
Client information and empowerment: understanding of what solicitors/advisors do & managing expectations
Interpreter provision

11. What do we need to do? Understand the needs of your beneficiary group
Understand the capacity of your own organisation, what would providing legal work entail, would it take resources from other areas of work?
Look at other models of work which are out there
Know the external environment, what partners are you working with, what partners are there out there that you might work with in the future?

12. How can we help?
Training – webinars, materials, revision courses, DLA Piper workshops
Support for registering with the OISC
Membership of the RALTG on-line group
Fiona’s contact details: