What can better information do for your audience?

Law-related problems are commonplace: they’ve been described as the problems of everyday life⁴. Problems at work, with housing, with debt, and family issues will affect most people at some point in their lives. These issues cause stress and anxiety, and in the worst cases lead to health problems, the loss of homes and jobs. And, of course, they have a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged individuals and communities.
Information has a key role to play in increasing people’s capacity to deal effectively with these issues.

Well-placed information can raise awareness of the law and rights, and help people recognise legal problems. It can increase understanding of what the law says and of the routes to a solution - where to go and what to do. It can help develop the knowledge and skills needed to deal with the problems, and the confidence needed to take action.

Better information has clear benefits for individuals and communities. Better awareness of the law can help people avoid problems in the first place, or take action earlier before problems escalate. Increased knowledge can help individuals manage problems more effectively themselves and know when and how to get advice and assistance.
Better information can help develop more capable individuals and communities that are able to deal with the issues they face. It can address the helplessness that so many people feel when faced with law-related problems, and help them develop the confidence and know-how needed to deal with the complexities of everyday life.

Capability is about more than knowing the law. It means knowing how to go about dealing with the problem and being able to manage it better.

Capability will mean different things for different people depending on their circumstances and their capacity to deal with problems.

For some, it will be the ability to recognise that a problem has a legal dimension and to know where they can go for help. For others, it will be the ability to act quickly and deal with the problem themselves through better understanding of issues and procedures.

Framework for producing information

Producing information can appear to be simple, but there are many issues to consider. Information providers need some kind of structure to guide them through the process in an organised and logical way. In producing this handbook, we have developed our own framework. It isn't the only way of running an information project. Much of it will just seem like common sense and we aren’t the first to try it⁵, but we find it helps enormously to structure the discussion into distinct issues.

The key issues that need to be considered are:

The audience and their needs.

The providing organisation and its intentions.

The means of delivery.

The information itself.

The mechanisms for feedback and evaluation.

Framework For Producing Information

These elements are tightly connected and interact. The nature of the audience will determine the means of delivery. The intention of the organisation will be to deliver an outcome for the audience. All will combine to determine the form and content of the information.

⁴ _{Causes of Action: Civil law and Social Justice - Legal Services Research Centre, 2006.}
⁵ _{A Model of Social Information Need - Nick Moore, 2004.} _{A Model of Social Information Need}