Citizens Advice Specialist Support
(April 2006)
Angela Williams, a Citizens Advice Specialist Support Worker and recent participant at the Council's User Support Workshops, talks about her challenging role delivering specialist training to advice workers.
1. What does the Citizens Advice Specialist Support do?
Citizens Advice is the membership organisation of the 475 Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales. As part of this organisation, Citizens Advice Specialist Support provides consultancy and training in Welfare Benefits, Money Advice, Employment and Consumer advice. Our main users are advisers in Citizens Advice Bureaux but our training is open to all and in money advice and employment, we offer consultancy to LSC contract holders. Additionally in money advice we are available to all Advice UK members, as well as Money Advice Trust partner agencies.
2. How widespread is the scheme across the country?
We are based in Cardiff, Leeds and Wolverhampton and our service is available to eligible agencies across England and Wales.
3. Why was the scheme established?
Specialist Support in Citizens Advice began as a regional Midlands project in the late 1970s and focussed on support for the new tribunal system in Social Security and Employment. The success of the project and the growing demand for this type of support allowed the project to develop until it had four subjects available over the whole of England and Wales.
4. What does your role as a specialist support worker involve and how did you come to this role?
I am part of the Welfare Benefits team of Specialist Support Officers (SSO). My team's main activities are providing a telephone consultancy service to CAB workers and delivering specialist training to bureaux and the wider advice sector. Advisers ring us for help with benefits cases, often when the case has reached the appeal stage. We advise on the legislation and case-law and can help by working on letters, submissions and applications for leave etc. Some enquiries are dealt with in one phone call; others will involve on-going support for some time. Many of the advisers who ring are experienced caseworkers who are looking to discuss their cases to get a different perspective and discuss their approach, some callers are newer to benefits advice and need more support such as help with drafting appeal submissions or help to find and interpret the relevant legislation.
I came to this role after working in Citizens Advice Bureaux for over 25 years and saw an opportunity to provide support to a wider group of people as well as spend lots of time researching the law, which I love!
5. What kind of training do you offer and are there any gaps in training provision?
Basic training for volunteers and paid staff is provided to Citizens Advice Bureaux free of charge by Citizens Advice. Across England and Wales, Specialist Support provides training in more complex areas of welfare benefits with courses such as appealing to the Commissioners and understanding and challenging overpayments. We are not funded to provide this training so have to charge for these courses. We also provide in-house training using courses in our library or by developing customised training to meet the specific needs of the agency.
In Wales we have run some successful training on representing at appeals in conjunction with Tribunal chairs and hope to deliver this again. We have also provided seminar style courses on topical issues such as Civil Partnerships. Again, as these courses have to be paid for, and many agencies have limited training budgets, from our perspective the biggest gap in training provision occurs when agencies do not have the funds to pay for the courses on offer.
6. What kind of cases do you deal with and is there a 'typical' type of case?
Perennial problems are IB and DLA appeals, notional capital; non-commercial tenancies; backdating and overpayment cases. The most common current consultancy enquiries are tax credit overpayments and right to reside cases.
7. In which area is the Citizens Advice Bureaux's advice most needed?
Benefits problems make up around 30% of enquiries to bureaux. Consumer (including debt), housing and employment make up a further 39%. The benefit system is complex and changes frequently. The clients who are most reliant on benefits are the most vulnerable in society. The sick, disabled, elderly and those on low incomes are the people who are likely to have problems with the benefits system e.g. appeals. In a tribunal, they may have very large amounts of money in issue, possibly their total income at stake. Even the most articulate of us would find it difficult to remain competent and confident in such circumstances. Some clients have added difficulties of mental ill-health and/or language difficulties which makes our advice and support even more vital for the client.
8. In January 2006, the LSC decided to withdraw all specialist support funding. What will be the implication of that for your unit and others like it?
Our employment and money advice teams are partially funded by the LSC and we've just heard that the Legal Services Commission has now withdrawn its termination notices on the specialist support contracts and pledged to enter into a full consultation on the future of the scheme. This followed a campaign by Citizens Advice and the other Specialist Support organisations. Clearly we need to keep up the campaign as the consultation takes place, but in the meantime we will continue to support advisers. Our funding comes from a variety of sources but if the LSC funding were to be discontinued at any point in the future this would potentially leave us in a position where we may be unable to continue to offer the same level of support within some subject areas.
9. Which aspect(s) of your role give you the greatest satisfaction?
I really enjoy helping an adviser do something they haven't done before for such as represent at appeal; get a decision revised; look up the legislation. It is especially satisfying to help develop a skill or provide some information that the adviser will be able to use unaided in the future.
10. Which aspect(s) of your role give you the least satisfaction?
The most frustrating aspect is having to explain rules that sometimes seem very unfair and which may cause hardship to clients such as the restrictions on backdating many benefits. I also wish we were more able to meet all the demand for our service although this is improving.
11. What does the future hold for specialist support?
We are currently piloting web-based access to our consultancy so people don't have to keep trying on the phone to get through. The likelihood, in most cases however, is that we will still have a phone conversation with the frontline adviser in order to talk through the details of a case. This should roll out later in 2006 and we are looking forward to a significant improvement in access for our service users. We are also always looking for additional funding to enhance our position and hope that more long term funding across all the subject areas will be secured. Our training provision is also expanding and we are working towards becoming the leading provider of training in our four subject areas across England and Wales.