The Community Justice Fund

Archived Active citizenship Advice services Age discrimination Democracy and freedom Gender equality and sexual orientation Human rights and equality Human rights and justice People with disabilities Policy, advocacy and campaigning Racial equality Refugees and asylum seekers Social welfare and poverty Antrim & Newtownabbey Ards & North Down Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Belfast City Causeway Coast and Glens Derry City and Strabane England Fermanagh and Omagh Great Britain Lisburn and Castlereagh Mid and East Antrim Mid Ulster Newry, Mourne and Down Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Large (over £60,000) Medium (up to £60,000) Small (up to £10,000)

Track grant Notes

Overview

The Community Justice Fund is a joint initiative to help specialist social welfare legal advice organisations cope with the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lay the foundations for longer-term renewal.

The Community Justice Fund is a joint initiative between Advice UK, Law Centres Network and Citizens Advice and a group of independent funders (the AB Charitable Trust, Access to Justice Foundation, Indigo Trust, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The Legal Education Foundation and Therium Access). It is hosted by The Access to Justice Foundation.

The Fund is made up of contributions from a range of sources, including government. They have tried to develop a process which is as simple as possible, ensuring that applicants only have to apply once, and the partners to the fund will then work to ensure that your chances of funding are maximised.

Grants of approx. 25-75K were focused on the needs of specialist social welfare legal advice organisations. Aim to help them be effective and sustainable in the face of responding to COVID-19, wth flexible support so that organisations can respond to these challenges in ways that they feel best meets their needs but for which they do not currently have the funds. This could be about ‘keeping the doors open’, making the necessary shifts to home working, maintaining services, adapting services to reach people in new ways and at greater scale, supporting the wellbeing of staff, or a combination of these and other responses.

What funding is available?

They made grants in two waves.

Wave one provided flexible grants to organisations that meet their eligibility criteria and priorities set out below. They understand that organisations have been responding quickly to the situation, so grants can be used towards the costs of your work from 1 April 2020.

Wave two provided flexible grants in support of their aims, responding to ongoing needs and building on the promising work arising out of wave one.

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible for funding, an organisation must be:

registered with the Charity Commission and working in the UK;

AND

able to demonstrate a track record of delivering legal advice in one or more of the following areas of law: asylum, community care, debt, disability, discrimination, education, employment, housing, immigration, mental health, public and administrative law and welfare benefits;

AND

able to demonstrate a track record in delivering advice at specialist level including carrying out end-to-end casework for clients, carrying out representation in a court or tribunal and/or holding legal aid contracts

They are not able to support generalist advice agencies, private sector legal aid practices or individuals.

Priorities

For organisations that meet these eligibility criteria, applications will be assessed competitively and prioritised against the following areas and funds awarded accordingly:

The organisation:

will put a flexible grant to good use in addressing the aims of the fund;
plays a leadership or coordinating role in a particular area of law, or in supporting a beneficiary group with particular needs, such as victims of trafficking or disabled people;
plays a leadership or coordinating role in a particular area of the UK, especially where specialist advice services are already scarce;
makes strategic use of law so as to maximise the impact of day-to-day casework;
works collaboratively as part of a wider network of organisations helping to meet legal needs;
uses its influence in local and national policy circles;
will capture and share insights and lessons that will help inform future work.

Grants Awarded

In Wave One, they made 173 grants to legal advice charities across the UK, totalling £8,592,808. The Law Centres Network, in alignment with the Community Justice Fund, administered a fund of a further £3 million. Wave Two made grants to 77 specialist legal advice charities totalling £3,519,576. Together, they have funded 179 specialist advice organisations to the value of £15,108,384.

They are in the process of making wave three grants to previous grantees to support them with dealing with the impact of the cost of living crisis. Once these are up and running they will be looking to the future of the collaboration and sharing thoughts on how best to take this forward.