This campaign has now closed
Our existing resources are stretched to meet current demand. For example clients, on average, have to wait 1.5 hours to see a General Adviser, and sometimes up to 5/6 weeks in order to see a Specialist Adviser, and telephone advise is severely restricted by the lack of volunteer generalist adviser staffing. Clients are also presenting with increasingly more complex problems, as they have nowhere else to go. We experience difficulty in meeting the needs of the wider variety of ethnic groups, particularly those from East Europe, because our advisers cannot speak their language and interpreting facilities are limited, expensive and in some cases unsatisfactory. Furthermore we believe that there is significant latent need to give more advice to groups who have only a vague awareness of our services, or who know nothing about us. We also need to address the demand for more specialist help in the Welfare Benefits field.
Categories
Beneficiaries
Situation
· To recruit and train need additional volunteer advisers so that we can see more clients. This requires expansion of our training programme. The training can only be done by recruiting a Guidance Tutor/ Volunteer Co-ordinator. · Increase levels of advice to our clients who have problems with money and debt. To cope with this we will sustain the service currently funded by the Financial Inclusion Fund beyond its end date in April 2008. · To support the Legal Services funded service should the changes to the Contract lead to a loss of funding in the short term. · To develop proposals for meeting the next round of Legal Service changes. · The loss of Ipswich Boroughs Welfare Benefits specialist has left a gap in service provision. We will address this by developing a Core Welfare Benefits service. · To maintain and update our IT infrastructure to provide faster machines better able to cope with the new, sophisticated software we use. Consequently the throughput of all advisers both existing and new will be greatly increased, thus enabling more clients to be seen. · To install computer kiosks to enhance throughput. Clients with simpler problems can use these to access the CAB Advice-Guide and E-Government sites with guidance, leaving advisers more time to cope with a greater number of difficult cases.