Advising in a pandemic: the new era of "blended advice" in social welfare law

This article provides original empirical insight into how publicly funded social welfare advice has been transformed by the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws upon original data generated through focus groups and interviews with frontline legal advisors and clients who sought advice relating to social welfare law during the pandemic. It argues that the pandemic has ushered in a new era of "blended advice", in which the advice sector has forged new frontiers by blending face-to-face and remote methods of communication to provide bespoke advice services to different client groups that seek their support in relation to social welfare and appeals to government decisions regarding benefits and housing entitlements. The article situates the new era of blended advice within the context of the gradual shift towards digitised justice processes that was already taking place before the pandemic, which rapidly accelerated following the first lockdown in England and Wales in March 2020. Moving forward into a post-pandemic world, the article advocates the importance of assessing and developing blended advice models that are, first, grounded in frontline expertise of this advice sector and, secondly, remain mindful of the hazards of simplistic assumptions about digitisation as a cure-all solution for access to justice, especially given the necessary role of this sector in holding the government accountable for administrative decisions relating to social welfare.