Legal literacy refers to the ability of individuals to understand, use, and engage with the law effectively. It involves having knowledge and awareness of basic legal rights, responsibilities, and processes, as well as the ability to access resources to address legal issues or seek justice. It is a subject that has been raised in a number of Safeguarding Adult Reviews and can positively impact in practice.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has commissioned SCIE to undertake some development work to support legal literacy across the sector. SCIE is undertaking two surveys to inform this work:
- The first survey will gather information on the existing legal literacy resources that are available to practitioners across the sector.
- The second survey will gather views from a range of practitioners on their current levels of knowledge on various legislation and will identify gaps in available resources.
Responses from the surveys will help SCIE understand the current provision around legal literacy, and what elements we can usefully develop in order to support practitioners. The closing date for both surveys is 17 January, 2025.
The survey should take approximately five minutes per resource to complete. This survey is for practitioners who manage or develop resources for practitioners who work with adults in England. Your responses will help identify resources that currently exist. Depending on the responses to this survey, we hope to create a searchable database to support practitioners to access appropriate legislative resources.
This survey is for any practitioners who work with adults in England. Your responses will help identify areas where additional training or resources might be necessary to improve practitioners’ ability to apply legal knowledge to practice. The survey should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.
For further information about SCIE’s legal literacy surveys please contact training@scie.org.uk.