Access to Justice — glossary

Accreditation means that an organisation has been formally assessed against recognised quality standards for its advice services. 

For example, the Advice Quality Standard (AQS) assesses organisations providing social welfare advice across areas such as housing, welfare benefits, debt, employment and immigration. 

Some areas also have specialist regulation, such as the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA formerly OISC), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), or Money and Pensions Service frameworks MaPS) for debt advice, and Lexcel or SRA regulation for legal advice. 

Accreditation assures that an organisation’s advice services are delivered to a consistent, high-quality standard.

These explanations are from the Advice Services Alliance.

• Information – general guidance to help people understand their options
• Advice – providing free expert guidance tailored to an individual’s circumstances, including some practical support – not one-off advice.
• Advice with casework – includes all of the above, but also requires the organisation to take action on behalf of the client to progress the matter, such as negotiating with third parties, following up, and supporting the client until the matter is resolved.
• Accreditation (for social welfare advice) – an organisation has been formally assessed against recognised quality standards for its advice services. For example, the Advice Quality Standard (AQS) covers organisations who provide advice on housing, welfare benefits, debt, employment and immigration.

Some areas that also have specialist regulation:

• Immigration advice – regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA), formerly known as the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC).
• Debt advice – may require Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) authorisation or adherence to Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) quality frameworks.
• Legal advice (in any area) – may be subject to Lexcel (Law Society quality mark) or regulation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

We understand that organisations need flexible, longer-term funding that is adaptable and responsive to the realities of their work. This enables them to meet the evolving advice needs of Londoners, strengthen their capacity, engage in social action and drive systems change.

Our grants can be used flexibly over the grant period. Organisations will need to demonstrate how they will use flexible funding to support their core costs and long-term strategic objectives, and how they will develop their social action work to bring about systems change. 

These costs may include:

• Core costs, such as staff salaries, wellbeing, overheads, and infrastructure.
• Programme activity, including direct advice provision and using insights from advice work to catalyse social action and systems change.
• Organisational development, such as time to reflect, learn, and adapt.
• Collaboration and movement-building, including connecting with other organisations, sharing insights, and building collective power.
• Community organising, advocacy and campaigning, drawing on frontline experience to influence policy and practice.
• Data and storytelling, to capture impact and amplify the voices of those affected.

As long as their work aligns with the programme’s purpose, grants can be used in whatever ways make the most sense within the organisation. We expect the work we fund to evolve, particularly within the 3- or 5‑year period. We’re comfortable with uncertainty, and we’ll be flexible along the way. We aim to continually support organisations in meeting the needs of their communities.

Our definition requires 75% of the Board of Trustees or Management Committee, and at least 50% of senior staff, to self-identify as being from the specific marginalised community or protected characteristic that the organisation serves. 

Alongside this threshold, we expect organisations to tell us about their accountability to the communities they work alongside and/​or represent. Specifically, how their work responds to the needs and lives of the people they aim to support, and how these people contribute to decision-making. We are open to applications from organisations who may fall just outside the 75% and 50% thresholds, as long as they can demonstrate strong community accountability and representation within their work.

There is some flexibility around this requirement, particularly if an organisation can demonstrate a strong commitment to progressing towards this level of representation over time. Or where contextual factors – such as the size, location, or stage of development of the organisation – make meeting the threshold challenging in the short term. 

Organisations should demonstrate their accountability to the community they serve – for example, through inclusive governance structures, participatory decision-making processes, or other mechanisms that ensure lived experience informs leadership and strategy. 

Lived experience in the context of ​‘led by and for’ organisations is relevant to the community or protected characteristic that the organisation serves.

We refer to the definition from Sistren Legal Collective’s ​‘Just Words’ toolkit: 

“Refers to the knowledge, insights, and perspectives gained through direct personal experience of specific life events, social issues, challenges, or personal conditions. Lived experience teaches and informs an individual’s identity and worldview in a way that can be difficult to replicate or to understand through theoretical knowledge or from the perspective of others who have not shared similar experiences.” 

Our grants will prioritise organisations who support, represent, and empower marginalised and underrepresented groups comprising identities such as race, disability, religion, socioeconomic background, gender identity, and sexuality. Intersectional diversity will also be taken into account when a person’s identities span multiple underrepresented identities.

When using this term, we: 

• Understand the complex social, economic, and political systems at work. There are diverse ways of understanding how power and privilege operate, as well as how certain groups may feel excluded from resources, opportunities, and rights. We do not wish to oversimplify these dynamics but to provide an entry point for examining the structural inequalities that shape our society. 
• Understand that these dynamics are intersectional – that different forms of oppression, such as racism, sexism, ableism, and classism, intersect and compound to create harmful experiences of exclusion. These forces push certain groups to the margins of society, denying them access to wealth, political power, and social capital. 
• Aim to highlight the structural barriers that maintain these inequalities while also recognising the resilience and agency of those who are fighting against them. 
• Seek to reflect the complex dynamics of power and oppression across various contexts, including systems of exclusion like institutional racism and other forms of systemic injustice.

Social action is often the route to systems change. For example, advocacy, campaigning, and community organising (social action) can lead to policy reform or narrative shifts (systems change). Systems change focuses on how systems operate, while social action empowers those affected to organise and mobilise to change the system. Social action may also involve gathering evidence, conducting research, and engaging in strategic litigation.

Systems change is about transforming the structures, processes, and mental models that sustain inequality. It goes deeper than addressing symptoms – it aims to shift how systems function at their core. We use the iceberg model to illustrate this:

• Events (i.e., someone being denied benefits)
• Patterns (i.e., repeated denials for certain conditions)
• Structures (i.e., flawed assessment processes)
• Mental models (i.e., societal beliefs about disability or poverty)

In practice, systems change can involve redesigning policies, rules, and services; shifting narratives and public mindsets; building collective power and collaboration; and supporting long-term, structural transformation.

Sistren Legal Collective and Community Organisers provide definitions of social action and systems change in our downloadable Funding Guidelines. 

These definitions are from the London Funders’ 2024 Mapping Funding for Social Welfare Advice in London report. 

• Housing: access to social housing, advice on housing rights and eviction (including around the management and condition of accommodation), access to assistance when facing or experiencing homelessness.
• Welfare benefits: eligibility and access to welfare benefits, income maximisation (focusing on promoting the uptake of welfare benefits).
• Debt: advice and guidance on how to avoid debt and how to deal with it when it becomes a problem.
• Employment: rights at work, for example, around unfair dismissal, unfair treatment, and withheld pay.
• Immigration: the provision of advice on immigration issues, which is subject to its own regulatory framework.