The Money and Pensions Service (MAPS)

The Debt Advice Peer Assessment Scheme (DAPA) for debt advice organisations in receipt of MAPS grant funding

Debt Advice Peer Assessment Scheme (DAPA)

The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) is a core funder for the provision of debt advice across England with access to quality advice, central to its strategic function.

The Debt Advice Peer Assessment Scheme (DAPA), previously Peer Review, is one strand of this focus, providing a mechanism for specialist debt advisers to assess the quality of advice provided by their peers. Originally launched in 2015, the Scheme was drawn up with input from a range of organisations across the debt advice sector and with specific considerations to regulatory requirements. In April 2018 and in line with The Money Advice Service published Strategic Approach to Debt Commissioning, Peer Review evolved to become the DAPA Scheme.

DAPA built upon the experience and learning from Peer Review and was redesigned to ensure it could effectively support and influence commissioning arrangements. In addition, the assessment approach was split into two quality measures to provide greater insight into the quality of advice provision. These include:

Recipient Level DAPA
Technical Site Visits

Participation in the Scheme is a mandatory element of the grant funding arrangement with MaPS and assessment performance forms one part of a series of metrics that inform the MaPS Performance Management Framework. This now means that MaPS has full insight into the assessment findings and how each organisation has performed during the assessment.

In addition to the traditional face to face advice delivery model, recognition has also been made of the alternative channels of advice provision across the sector and the DAPA assessment process and Scheme criteria currently comprises three separate strands:

Face to Face provision
Webchat advice
Telephone Helpline provision

In conjunction with MaPS and the IMA, the Scheme has created a number of useful tools for Advisers which can be located via https://www.i-m-a.org.uk/learning-development/adviser-networking-information-sharing/ Further information regarding the DAPA Scheme, assessment approach and Scheme criteria is available as follows:

DAPA Scheme Quality Measures