Feasibility study for a public legal education strategy on employment law help

This project derived from the emerging evidence of the need to raise people’s awareness of the way in which legal information and assistance can help with the employment problems that so many experienced as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and existing evidence of the way in which employment problems can cluster with debt, benefit, family and health problems.

We will carry out a needs and gaps analysis to help us determine:

• What employment problems do people experience including, who is affected, roughly the scale of the problem, and how do people express employment problems and what they feel about them.
• Which employment-related processes/problems might benefit most from being supported by a public legal education (PLE) intervention, including:
  • What people need to know and be able to do to address these issues;
  • What help is available to them;
  • Where there are gaps in the availability of help;
  • What is the quality of that help?

This, in turn, will inform a proposal for a PLE employment strategy that would encompass our own service as well as draw together a wider partnership for employment support across England and Wales.

We will present our findings in a brief report which will offer suggestions for any further action.

We are very grateful to Bar Standards Board for funding this work.

_{Last edited 27 March 2023}