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Youth Access Responds to CLS Strategy

28 March, 2008

28 October 2005

Youth Access has responded to the Legal Services Commission’s consultation on its draft strategy for the Community Legal Service by warning that it could further marginalise young people’s access to advice.

The key points made in our response are that:

The proposals to focus resources entirely on agencies with legal aid contracts, coupled with uncertainty over the future of the CLS Quality Mark, threatens to damage the goodwill of youth advice agencies working at General Help level and their referral relationships with mainstream services.
Young people should be the subject of a specific focus for the work of the CLS and its funding, which is already supposed to prioritise the ‘welfare of children’.
Further work is needed to assess young people’s needs for advice and to ensure coherence between the CLS Strategy and the Every Child Matters/Youth Matters agenda.
The proposal to develop Community Legal Advice Centres presents a risk of major rationalisation of advice services aimed at specific client groups.

Read Youth Access’ full response