Help at the heart of your community Print E-mail
Written by Woman's World, 2006   
Woman’s World talked to Clare Reddaway, one of the organisation’s 13,000 volunteer advisers, about her experience of volunteering at Bath Citizen's Advice Bureau,  the training and the way it has helped her to see another side to the Georgian city of Jane Austen.

The Citizens Advice service was set up in 1939 and the distinctive blue and yellow CAB logo is as much a feature of British life as fish and chips and Marmite. What you might not know is that Citizens Advice Bureaux are run largely by volunteers who give advice and help to people from all walks of life, on everything from debt and consumer issues to family matters and housing.

CAB advisers give good-quality advice quite independent of government or local authority and so have no agenda except the client’s wellbeing.

Woman’s World: Clare, how long have you been a CAB volunteer adviser and what made you decide to do it?
Clare Reddaway: I started my training in November 2002 and started ‘flying solo’ about six months after that. I’d recently moved to Bath and my daughter had just started full-time school. I wanted something stimulating, relatively flexible, out of the house and not involving children. Ideally, I would learn some new skills and gain new knowledge. The CAB was just the ticket.
 
ImageWW: Do you think volunteering helped you to settle into a new city?
CR: I definitely got to know the area better and the other CAB volunteers are all very friendly. It was good to have a focus separate from school and family. What I have gained has been much wider than ‘getting to know Bath’. I’ve got to know a lot about people, how to deal with them and listen to them, as well as a lot about crisis and how best to deal with it. Also, helping people makes you feel good. I can’t tell you what a kick I got the other day when I found out that, after I had spent months wrestling with the Pensions Service, a client was told she was owed £13,000. It made her pretty happy, too!

WW: How does volunteering fit in with your other commitments?
CR: For me, it fits in well. I recently did an MA and couldn’t do the two sessions a week that most of my volunteer colleagues do, so I dropped down to one day. I also take most of the school holidays off although, if I have a client whose case needs work, I’ll pop in to pick up on it. As my daughter gets older, I might well have time to take on more.

WW: How long did the training take and what did it involve?
CR: It took about six months and was far more thorough than I’d expected. We started with lectures and workshops, going through the excellent CAB training booklets, which cover most aspects of CAB work, so there were sessions on benefits, debt advice, housing, consumer affairs, immigration, family etc. Some of these were relatively straightforward and some more difficult. We sat in as silent observers on interviews that experienced advisers were holding. We had a week-long course in Bristol, looking at interview skills, issues like racism and how not to be judgemental. Lastly, we had to conduct our own interviews, observed by a supervisor.

WW: Were you daunted when you had to take your first client?
CR: I was terrified! However, I realised pretty soon that clients are far too anxious about their own situation to care about my state of mind and were usually happy to tell me anything I needed to know.

ImageWW: Are you working on your own or as part of a team?
CR: Definitely as part of a team. I check almost every piece of advice that I’m going to give with an advice session supervisor, who will pick up on mistakes and omissions. All the cases are monitored so there is a pretty secure safety net.

WW: A visitor’s impression of Bath might be that it’s rather well-heeled. Has being a CAB adviser given you a different perspective on it?
CR: Absolutely. The Georgian grandeur conceals all manner of ills. A few minutes out of the centre are areas of considerable deprivation. People have problems everywhere.

WW: What have you learnt about people from your experiences at the CAB? Were you surprised at the sort of cases that come in?
CR: I’ve learnt that no one is immune from disaster and that everyone has problems, but some people are less well-equipped to deal with them, particularly those who have mental health issues. For some people life is a continual struggle just to keep going and those people deserve our help and support. The job has its share of surprises. I remember one of my early clients, a well-dressed attractive woman in her early 30s. Consumer problem, I thought, or employment. Actually, she had mental health and alcohol issues and her question was about housing – she claimed her caretaker had raped her. I’d made assumptions about her and I was wrong.

WW: Having seen many clients with debt problems, would you say that personal debt is increasing?
CR: With debt clients, it’s often the case that originally a personal trauma like divorce or an accident threw them off the rails. Credit is almost criminally easy to obtain and when people are desperate they don’t read the small print. Things spiral out of control and often the monthly interest payments can amount to more than the original debt, often far more than their income. People come to us at the end of their tether, stressed beyond belief. The sad thing is that although we can take the pressure off by negotiating with their creditors and organising their debt repayments, they still have to pay the debts back, a process that can take many years.

WW: What’s the best thing about volunteering?
CR: I love the variety. In one morning, I might give advice on applying for a working visa for the Japanese girlfriend of a British citizen, then on getting food vouchers for someone who has suddenly become homeless, followed by a newly-released prisoner with literacy issues who needs help filling out forms. People are so relieved to have somebody to talk to – I become a friendly listening ear.

How to volunteer

Don’t worry if you don’t think you’ve got the right skills or qualification. All bureaux rely on volunteer advisers who get free training and a certificate in general advice work, equivalent to NVQ level 3. CAB volunteers are from all ages and backgrounds so it’s important to be open-minded and to be able to work in a team. Advisers have to be good listeners, able to read and write English and do basic maths. You also have to have enough time to spare.

There are also many ‘behind the scenes’ volunteering opportunities such as administration, campaigning for change, working on reception, IT, fundraising and interpreting.

To find out more, call 08451 264 264 (calls charged at local rate, Monday–Friday, 9.00am–5.00pm) or go to www.citizensadvice.org.uk/join-us
 
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