People coming for help at Pitsmoor Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) may notice a change to our service from 31st May 2006. We will be changing our ‘first come first served’ drop-in to an appointment system.
We are a very busy advice centre. When we open the doors there is invariably a queue, which fills our waiting room and results in the people who come in last waiting hours for help. We conducted a survey of our clients and found that nearly half did not speak English as their first language or were not born in the UK. These factors make our job more challenging, take longer – and often more fulfilling.
As well as the team who help people from the open door service we have advice workers who work with local communities, such as Somali, Pakistani and Afro Caribbean communities, or specialise in areas of advice work, such as debt, benefits or immigration.
We believe we do a good job – our team of advice workers (mostly volunteers) give advice to people experiencing a wide range of problems and much more. But we decided that it wasn’t good enough to ask people to wait a long time before they got a service and when we asked people how we could improve the service quite a few said they would prefer appointments.
So, when people come in the future they should have a short wait and an initial interview with an experienced advice worker who will: give them an appointment with an advice worker in the near future or refer them to a person who can help them most (this may be in Pitsmoor CAB or in one of our partner organisations) or tell them where they can access a more appropriate service.
We think this will allow us to prepare for appointments better, by arranging an interpreter for example, but more importantly this will allow us to provide a better service without people having to sit for hours in our waiting room.
Pitsmoor Citizens Advice Bureau is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10am–1pm, or call 275 5376.
by Chris Walker, Manager