Citizens Advice Bureau

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Citizens Advice Bureau Logo.

A Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) is one of a network of charities throughout the UK that give free, confidential information and advice to help people sort out their money, legal, consumer and other problems. Trained advisers can help write letters, make phone calls, negotiate with creditors and take cases to tribunals and court.

The CAB is not a department of central or local government, but a local charitable organisation staffed mainly by volunteers. It is totally non-selective in its clients and impartial in dealing with all sorts of persons and problems and is totally free. Its primary aim is helping people by investigating their problems, exploring and explaining their options, and where appropriate helping to contact and deal with the relevant officials and organisations.

1 History
2 Work
3 Organisation and funding
4 New initiatives
5 External links

[edit] History

The first 200 bureaux opened on 4th September 1939, the day after the second world war started. By 1942 there were 1074 bureaux, but in the 1950s the funding was cut and in the 1960s there were only 416 bureaux. In 1973 the government funded NACAB, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, to enlarge the network. In 2003 this changed its name to Citizens Advice (in England and Northern Ireland) and Cyngor ar Bopeth or "Advice on everything" (in Wales).

In 2006 there were 462 bureaux offering advice from over 3000 locations.

[edit] Work

A lot of the CAB's work involves issues such as debt management and welfare benefits, housing, immigration and asylum, employment issues, consumer complaints and landlord/tenant disputes. Advice is available in the bureaux, but also in community venues, in people's homes, by phone, by email and at www.adviceguide.org.uk.

The Citizens Advice service, both locally and nationally, also uses CAB clients' problems as evidence to influence policy makers to review laws or administrative practices which cause undue difficulties to clients. A list of policy/campaign publications is at www.citizensadvice.org.uk/index/campaigns/social_policy.htm.

[edit] Organisation and funding

The Citizens Advice service is one of the largest volunteer organisations in the UK with over 20,000 volunteers. The majority of these are part time volunteer advisers with varying levels of training, but the figure also includes trustees and administrators. Typically there will be a paid bureau manager, advice session supervisors and in some cases some paid advisers.

Each local CAB or group is a separate independent local charity, with its own trustee board. Bureaux throughout the UK have varying community needs and very different resources, and consequently offer different styles and levels of service.

They often receive significant funding by local authorities, sometimes under service level agreements and local solicitors may agree to provide limited legal advice pro bono. Some staff may be qualified to give specialist legal advice under the Community Legal Service, or to advise on immigration.

All CAB's try to ensure their services are accessible to all sections of the community, so that provision can be made for the housebound, immigrant communities, rural inhabitants, elderly and disabled as appropriate.

All Citizens Advice Bureaux in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are members of Citizens Advice, an operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux. The association is a registered charity financed partly by central government, public funding as well as by subscriptions from the bureaux. It provides bureaux with information, training and consultancy services, and regularly audits individual bureaux against the requirements of its comprehensive membership scheme, which is accepted by the Legal Services Commission as equivalent to their quality mark audit.

[edit] New initiatives

Despite the large number of volunteers working for the organisation, level of demand for the service often far outstrips resources. The National Association has recently begun looking at ways to reach all members of the community through new mediums such as email advice and DigiTV.

Another initiative has been allowing university students to train as advisers to gain credits toward their degree. This was pioneered by a partnership between the University of Portsmouth and Portsmouth Citizens Advice Bureau and is due to roll out to the University of Reading by July 2007