Citizens Advice Bureau
Encyclopedia : C : CI : CIT : Citizens Advice Bureau
A Citizen Advice Bureau (CAB) is one of a chain of local bureaux throughout the UK which give information, advice and sometimes casework, free of charge to all comers.
Contrary to a widespread misapprehension, a CAB is not a department of central or local government, but a local charitable voluntary organisation. It is totally non-selective in its clients, and impartial in dealing with all sorts of persons and problems. The CAB service has an open-ended scope, but principally helps people by investigating their problems, exploring and explaining their options, and where appropriate helping to contact and deal with the relevant officials and counterparties.
In practice a lot of work involves issues such as debt management and welfare benefits, housing, asylum, employment and employment tribunals, consumer complaints and landlord/tenant disputes. Advice is available in the bureaux, but also in community venues, in people's homes, by phone, by email and at [www.adviceguide.org.uk].
The Citizens Advice service, both locally and nationally, also uses CAB clients' problems as evidence, to influence policy makers to review laws or administrative practices which cause undue difficulties to clients.
Each local CAB or group is a separate local charity, with its own trustee board which determines its strategic priorities. CABx throughout the UK have very different community needs and very different resources, often significantly funded by local authorities under service level agreements, and consequently offer widely different styles and levels of service. Often arrangements are made with local solicitors to provide some limited legal advice; and some CABx are formally qualified themselves to give specialist legal advice under the Community Legal Service, or to advise on immigration. All CABx check and ensure that their services are practically available to all sections of the local community, so that special provision may be made for the housebound, for immigrant communities, for rural inhabitants, the elderly or disabled, or other disadvantaged groups as appropriate.
Citizens Advice, an operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, is a membership association for Citizens Advice Bureaux. Citizens Advice is a United Kingdom registered charity which is partly financed by public funding as well as by subscriptions from the bureaux. Citizens Advice provides bureaux with information, training and consultancy services, and regularly audits each local bureau against the requirements of their comprehensive Membership Scheme, which is accepted by the Legal Services Commission as equivalent to their Quality Mark audit.
The Citizens Advice service is one of the largest volunteer organisations in the UK with over 21,000 volunteers (the majority of these being part time volunteer advisors with varying levels of training, but also trustees and administrators). Typically a few paid managers, supervisers and other part-time staff may support a number of other part time supervised volunteers. Despite this, level of demand for the service often far outstrips the available supply. The National Association has recently embarked upon the creation of an "Access Strategy" designed to engage all member bureaux in "seeing more people in different ways" and in fostering innovative methods of service delivery, such as Email advice or video conferencing.
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