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Advice bureaux volunteers offer equally good service
• CAMDEN Citizens Advice Bureaux provides a vital service to Camden’s communities, helping with over 22,000 problems each year.
We are determined to continue to do so in the best possible way.
Tom Foot’s articles on Camden CAB (June 18 and 25) correctly identified that the trustees are consulting on a proposal to restructure service delivery but failed to give the full picture.
The London Borough of Camden funds our open door service which we deliver through our three main bureaux.
We need to restructure this service in order to meet increased output targets while staying within the contract budget. The trustees propose to make all the bureaux volunteer service delivery centres.
This would bring the Kilburn and Kentish Town bureaux into line with Holborn, which already runs successfully on this model. The Holborn experience shows that trained volunteers deliver just as good advice as paid advisers but at a lower cost.
The Holborn bureau is also open nearly twice as long each week as the other two.
The successful use of volunteers has been the experience nationally; most CABs in the country operate in this way. The suggestion that volunteers cannot cope in such a role is simply not borne out by experience and is insulting to our many dedicated volunteers.
The use of volunteers allows Camden CAB to integrate better with the community it serves by drawing on that community for its volunteers. It also allows us to offer training and access to work through its training programme.
Naturally, to move to the new model means disrupting the current bureaux.
At Kentish Town there will be a brief period of closure in order to refurbish followed by a temporary reduction in service as volunteers are trained up to a satisfactory level.
However, every step will be taken to ensure that clients can still access advice services.
Mark Hutton
Vice-Chairman Camden CAB
Quality help is available
• I HAVE been a volunteer adviser with Camden CAB in the Holborn bureau for six years.
I was angry to read that an unidentified volunteer told your paper “Some of these people have multiple mind-boggling problems.
“The idea that volunteers can cope with all that is a joke.”
I have helped many clients with mind-boggling complex problems over the years, whom I have helped with great effect; some of them in great depth and for long periods.
At Holborn all our frontline advisers are volunteers but our many clients, about 45 each day, will testify to the quality of advice we give.
Camden CAB is going through a difficult period at the moment but rather than indulge in anonymous insults, everyone involved should be working towards an improved service, with greater access for clients, that is possible if we use volunteers effectively,
Louise Lewis
Highgate Hill, N6
Clients hit by recession
• I WRITE as a local service user, and as someone who has worked in the voluntary sector in Camden for many years, eight of those years being at Camden Community Law Centre.
The letter published from the Area Director for Citizens Advice (June 25) misses the point.
No one disputes that volunteers can be effective advisers once they are trained and experienced.
However, to suggest that newly-trained volunteers can provide the same level of service as long-serving, highly experienced staff who have developed knowledge and skills over many years is disingenuous.
By all means let the CAB recruit more volunteers to add value to the service they provide, but please let’s not pretend they can replace the skilled advisers currently coping with the heavy demands of clients hit by the recession without there being any loss of service to the public.
Hilary Barnes
Address supplied, NW5
Provision of funding
• YOUR article (Lawyers speak out against end of CAB advice sessions, June 25) is misleading.
Camden Council provides more funding to its local CAB than any other council in the country. In 2007 Camden CAB successfully bid for contracts worth £983,000 a year running to 2011 to provide council-funded advice services.
The CAB is an independent charity and has to manage its own affairs. Camden Council has an excellent relationship with Camden CAB, but we rightly do not seek to micro-manage voluntary sector organisations. Other contracts to deliver specific projects have been awarded to the CAB by the council, and other organisations, that all contribute to its operating budget.
It is insulting to volunteers at Camden CAB to suggest that they are unable to provide an effective advice service. Both paid and unpaid advisers are trained to the same high level and deliver the same high quality advice. Of the 26,000 people who currently work in the CAB service nationally, 20,000 are volunteers.
Information can now be delivered in many different ways, as CABs enable people to help themselves. For those people who need more assistance CAB volunteers can either give advice themselves or offer appointments with paid advisers who can give specialist advice.
The CAB’s decision to move to a volunteer- led service is not connected to the level of council funding. All CABs nationwide will be moving towards this model. Rather than damaging advice services, as you suggest, this change will strengthen what is on offer to Camden residents – an increase in the total number of clients who can be helped, better focus of resources on those clients in greatest need and improved client satisfaction, especially around waiting times.
Furthermore, Camden CAB will deliver front-line generalist advice services both through its offices and via outreach services in places like supermarkets.
This will partly be achieved through the additional £140,000 the council has provided for the CAB and the Mary Ward Legal Centre to deliver a tailored service. The Mary Ward centre will provide specialist welfare benefits and debt advice for more complex cases.
Contrary to what you suggest, Camden Council is committed to providing advice services for residents and businesses during the recession, which is why we are investing additional funds from our £6million recovery fund into making sure people can access useful advice.
We have also set up a single advice number. Anyone needing help can call 020 7974 6666.
Cllr Andrew Marshall
executive member for community development and planning
They carry on cutting
• YOUR lead stories on both pages 1 and 2 tell us all we need to know about the “caring” Liberal Democrats running the Town Hall (We’ll pay a penalty for sport cuts and Lawyers speak out against end of CAB advice sessions, June 25).
On the one hand we have a new cut by the council, to sports officers. On the other, the effect of an old one, slashing voluntary sector grants to the three Citizens Advice Bureaux in Camden.
In both cases who loses out?
Our youngsters, pensioners on low incomes, people who can’t afford to pay for sports service or legal advice privately, often the most disadvantaged and poorest in our borough.
Now this has been said many times by Labour, but it’s worth repeating: all these cuts are happening while the Lib Dems running Camden are sitting on reserves of £80million, far, far, in excess of anything the Labour administration used to hold.
Of course, not all of this money should be spent. Reserves are needed for emergencies. But in the face of a real emergency, like the recession, does the council spend some more? No. It carries on cutting. One of the latest casualties is the Kilburn Town Centre Management Scheme, scrapped at a time when the High Road’s traders are struggling and need all the help from the council they can get.
All these are just further examples of how arrogant and out of touch the Lib Dems have become in only three years since they took over control of the Town Hall. So much for a caring council.
Mike Katz
Chair, Hampstead & Kilburn Labour Party NW6
View plans in context
• CAMDEN CAB Limited said that it is not proposing to close any office.
This is not quite the point.
The board of Camden CAB plans to close the office in Kentish Town to the public from October this year and to use the premises as a call centre.
Then, once the board have found and trained volunteers, to open Kentish Town again, when resources allow, they say, to the public.
The plans for Camden CAB have to be seen in context. People who approach the CAB and those who qualify for legal aid are often the most vulnerable.
Their services have been hit again and again by this government. The Ministry of Justice reported in June that the Labour government’s “reforms” of legal aid provision had led to legal aid solicitors firms “cherry-picking” cases to take on, and using less qualified staff to work on cases.
The plans by Camden CAB Limited make no sense. We are in the middle of a recession when Camden’s residents need to be able to access advice quickly.
Camden CAB is paid by the council to provide advice work for people with debt and welfare benefits problems; my concern is that the plan to close Kentish Town to the public would mean that crucial advice work may be jeopardised.
Fewer people would be able to get advice from the CAB, and Kentish Town would not provide a face-to-face service. There are no volunteers yet available for Kentish Town CAB. So there would be a gap of months while volunteers are recruited and trained. Meanwhile Kentish Town CAB’s doors would be closed.
Camden CAB must change its mind, or residents will suffer the consequences of these ill-thought out actions.
Jo Shaw
Honorary Legal Adviser, Kentish Town CAB and Lib demi Parliamentary Campaigner, Holborn and St Pancras
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