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Neil Bateman argues against Benefits Agency plans to hold weekly surgeries at social services offices.

The current push for organisations to work in partnership is powerful, and for many reasons it is essential that such partnership exists. But effective partnership work means that organisations collaborate where it helps the customer, and the surgery idea is not necessarily in the customers' best interests.

Benefits Agency staff bring with them a whole range of experiences and attitudes to "advice" work. Their remit is often to give information, rather than act as advocates for the client. And even simple information-giving is not as neutral as the Benefits Agency likes to pretend. The staff involved have to be aware of the risks of being selective in the information they give, and the client's interests are usually best served by having access to a determined and skilled advocate.

Worryingly, Benefits Agency staff are used as benefit advisers in Care Direct, which was launched this month. It will be important to have independent evaluation of the quality and thoroughness of their advice (entirely consistent with the requirements of the Community Legal Service and Best Value process). One hopes that the local authorities involved in Care Direct have considered this.

The Department for Work and Pensions is also approaching organisations with a view to such surgeries taking place on a regular basis in 2003, as part of the model for its local service for pensioners.

Staff at the Benefits Agency are not and cannot be welfare rights advisers. They will always be constrained by working for that organisation - in not being allowed to push hard for discretionary payments; challenging overpayment decisions; submitting appeals; or simply going that extra mile when filling in a disability living allowance claim.

More fundamentally, much of the information and advice that comes out of the Benefits Agency at present is of such a low standard that it creates many of the problems that social services directors and welfare rights advisers have to resolve.

Without a major investment in training and other staff development, most Benefits Agency staff are simply not in a position to inform or advise to the level of competence that most advice agencies require.

It is also the case that they are untrained to advise comprehensively across the range of benefits and on the relationship between benefits and charges. That's not to say that there aren't Benefits Agency staff who could be expert advisers, and there are many who have the customers' interests very much at heart. The problems are their role and their training.

Another problem with the surgery approach is that it is not the best way to reach people. Loose, untargeted advice sessions tend not to produce great returns for the time invested. Wouldn't customers be better off if the Benefits Agency initially concentrated on processing claims to a higher standard?

The only sensible approach is to develop your own in-house welfare rights advice capacity. This gives you control over quality, dovetailing with your organisational priorities, as well as the ability to target advice resources and the chance to offer advice that may well be against official Benefits Agency policy but which is in the best interests of your customers.

Neil Bateman manages Suffolk Council and Suffolk Health Authority's welfare rights service. If you have a question to be answered in Welfare Rights please write to him c/o Community Care.