Citizens Advice Bureau - Annual Review 2024/25

Experience of working in the bureau is an excellent basis for training to enter or return to the workplace. Each year many students are recruited as volunteer advisers who later secure gainful employment after graduating. The face to face element supersedes the text book. Other young people actively seeking work increase their prospects of employment from the benefit of volunteering in a wide-ranging and intense business. It often leads to prestigious and well paid work in or out of this sector. In the last year five of our volunteers secured employment within the bureau itself. For law graduates working in the bureau often leads to traineeships with firms of solicitors. Many past young volunteers return to express their gratitude for the training and experience gained which helped them into their new employment and the start of their working life. OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Over the year the bureau had 70 applicants from prospective new volunteers of which 28 were accepted for basic training with a further 27 to confirm a starting date. In the preceding year we had 55 new applicants. At the year end we had 18 volunteers in training. We had 14 volunteers leave for reasons of retirement, securing employment, returning to education or for personal matters. Just over half of the new recruits are within the age range 20 - 29, many of them law students. The over 50 age group has dropped from 17% to 8%. Training is mostly done remotely by electronic means through CASLearn although there is still some face to face tuition. Most new advisers opt for advising but some prefer admin support, social policy, IT, reception or other CAB duties. Basic training covers the CAB practices & policies, administration requirements, interview techniques and essential subjects. It also includes shadowing, being shadowed and achieving a level of competence to be awarded a certificate from Citizens’ Advice Scotland. On-going training for existing staff continued with specialist subjects like advanced debt management, mentoring, social security, housing, employment, immigration, gambling awareness and any new legislation. Training is also delivered to staff when any new projects are introduced. Several staff attended on-line in-service training courses offered by Citizens’ Advice Scotland andMoney Advice Scotland. This bureau, like others in Glasgow, subscribes to the GlasgowUniversity scheme whereby their students can, after 100 hours in the bureau, gain credits towards their course. Training is always on-going and the bureau remains committed to staff training and personal development. TRAINING Pension wise is a service from MoneyHelper that offers free and impartial guidance to people aged 50 or over helping them to make an informed decision about taking money from their UK Defined Contribution pensions pots. At a Pensionwise appointment lasting about 60 minutes a fully trained Guidance Specialist will explainhoweachoptionworks and is taxed, how to look out for scams, how taking their pensionwill impact their benefits and any debt arrangements and how to find other trusted sources of guidance and advice. Clients will then get a summary of the pension options and next steps they need to take after their appointment. Guidance Specialists deliver a mixture of face-to-face appointments in the CABx across the UK and appointments over the telephone to service users around the world. The number to call to book is 0800138 3944. In 2024/25 this CAB had 80 appointments with 60 completed. Total value of Defined Contribution pension pots £5,951,208.00 and average value of Defined Contributions pension pots £52,203.58. PENSIONWISE The bureau has a small team of workers specialising in Social Policy. The team filters through cases brought to the bureau and encourages advisers to highlight any social policy issue as they arise. It works closely with a dedicated Social Policy Group set up to assist Glasgow CABx with such matters of interest and that should be addressed locally or nationally. Similarly the team reports back to Citizens Advice Scotland on their findings. Examples fromthe year were gettingCABclient consent forms tobe acceptedby a large public organisationwho would not do so before; lobbying MPs about the newWelfare Reforms being proposed in national government; disability award letter templates causing problems for blue badge applicants in that the templates are undated. SOCIAL POLICY Both projects are national services administered by Citizens Advice Scotland. Help to Claim, operated by paid staff, provides advice and support in setting up Universal Credit claims via telephone and webchat channels. Help to Claim grew in 2024/25 due to increased demand of 41.18% created by the Managed Migration of benefit claims from legacy benefits to Universal Credit. Tomeet this demand funding was increased and the Help to Claim team in this bureau doubled to 4 advisers. In addition to higher demand, the complexity of clients’ situations have increased with them contacting the bureau with many more issues than ever before. We served 14,441 unique clients which was an increase of 33.24% from the previous year Help to Claim reports show the quality of advice across the project has remained excellent throughout the year. Money Talks Plus supports anyone seekingmoney advice but aims to reach and support priority low income family groups and debt clients. Principally family groups are single parent families, families with an adult or child with a health condition, minority ethnic families, larger families with 3 or more children, families with a child under age one and families where the mother is under 25. Over the last year this bureau recorded £675,677.19 with 96% coming from benefits advice. There were 569 clients with 340 (60%) belonging to the service’s priority family groups. Money Talks Plus is essentially a face to face service from the main office and some outreach location provided by paid staff with the additionality of a few volunteers. The service includes Blue Badge applications for mobility assistance where appropriate of which there were 105 in the last year. HELP TO CLAIM & MONEY TALKS PLUS