Publicly-funded advice services in Scotland: review report

Footnotes

1. Type I advice is described in the Scottish National Standards for Information and Advice Providers (the Standards) as being "Active Information, Sign-posting and Explanation". A particular emphasis is placed on the 'active' aspect of the advice provision and therefore the type of advice extends beyond the presence of posters or leaflets and rather is concerned about explanation and, where appropriate, referrals to other advice agencies or service delivery partners.

Type II advice is described in the Standards as "Casework". Casework is described as supporting an individual in need of advice to take action, so for example support with completing forms or negotiating with third parties on a user's behalf. Type II advice stops short of advocacy and representation - these activities fall into Type III advice and are beyond the scope of this research

2. The user experience of advice services did not form part of the research.

3. An information service which is a comprehensive source of information on public and social policy and practice and has a database of over 200,000 reports and articles on a wider range of topics - and through additional follow-up of sources cited in the literature provided both by Scottish Government and our enquiry through IDox.

4. Due to the cascading, we do not know how many organisations may have received the survey through this route and it is therefore not possible to provide an exact response rate. However, taking account of direct contacts only, the survey response rate was 41% which is a good response rate for this type of survey.

5. Find out more about the benefits that are being devolved to Scotland at /policies/social-security/.

6. More information is available at http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/08/1032/1.

7. In order to meet the tight timescales of this project, Local Authorities and NHS Scotland Boards were not directly contacted as part of this research. Therefore, the information provided in this chapter is drawn from secondary data contained in the literature and the information provided by advice providers who reported being in receipt of public sector funding.

8. It should be noted that the Improvement Service report that this figure is likely to be higher and that anomalies in accounting may be present as a result of reporting arrangements and differences in IT systems across Local Authorities and suppliers.

9. Developed in collaboration with the Scottish Government, the Money Advice Service, and the Improvement Service

10. It should be noted that these figures apply to the calendar years 2009/10.

11. Atfield et al (2014) note that being on a persistently low income hampered people's ability to extract themselves from debt, regardless of their financial skills and the advice they received.