Sarah Macfadyen

AdviceUK is the UK's largest support network for free, independent advice centres. We work alongside our members to help individuals and communities to enforce their rights and improve their quality of life, through the provision of social welfare advice. Our member organisations are very diverse both in terms of size and in their ways of working. Some, like National Debtline and Shelter, are large organisations with predominantly paid staff. However, many are small community-based organisations, very often staffed and managed by part-time volunteers. For many AdviceUK members, provision of advice is their core work. However, for a significant minority advice is only one of a range of services provided in the context of their wider activities (for example, housing associations, credit unions, student unions, and women’s refuges). Most of our members work in areas with high levels of deprivation, and over a quarter serve a particular community of interest (for example, BME community groups, estate-based community projects, people with particular health needs or disabilities). AdviceUK has pioneered the use of Vanguard Consulting’s Systems Thinking in the advice sector. From our work we know that advice can help public services learn where and how things go wrong. Commissioning advice to ‘do better things’ could help public bodies improve services and reduce costs. More information on our groundbreaking work in this regard can be found at http://www.adviceuk.org.uk/bold