Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire still available despite Covid

Teresa Archer, chief officer at Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire

In March, some of our volunteers decided to start isolating prior to the national lockdown announcement.

We started to restrict our appointments as we had fewer resources, and more clients started cancelling face-to-face appointments.

During the week of March 23 when lockdown was finally announced, we saw unprecedented demand on our Adviceline at the point where we had little capacity to answer it.

Within two weeks we had 35 volunteers and all of our staff working remotely from home.

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We adapted our support systems to ensure that we are providing quality supervision and support to our volunteers and staff, providing supervision remotely through video calls.

We have transferred some of our staff and volunteers onto a new softphone system to enable internet calling and in December we were able to introduce our new Freephone number for Adviceline to enable more clients to reach us.

At Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire we run a number of services, and we are pleased to say that they are all still available remotely.

We have maintained a skeleton staff at our offices, to manage our incoming and outgoing mail, and for those that cannot work from home.

Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire in 2018

During the late summer, we did open up our offices to accommodate a few face-to-face appointments for those that were really finding it difficult to move forward with telephone advice, but we have seen little demand for that.

We have also provided call back request slips on our front door so that people trying to use our drop-in can put a telephone number through the door.

Our interview rooms are very small, so we took the decision that we could only interview people in our waiting room to ensure social distancing can be maintained, and we have provided hand gel, face masks and shields, and booking in procedures for staff and clients alike.

We continue to remain closed for drop-in currently to maintain safety for our staff and volunteers, as well as the public.

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Overall, we have dealt with lower numbers of clients and issues in 2020 compared to 2019, although 2019 was our busiest year of all time.

The two areas where we have dealt with increased issues are:

Universal Credit: Up from 11 per cent of issues in 2019 to 16 per cent of issues in 2020. This is an additional 506 issues.

Employment: Up from seven per cent in 2019 to 10 per cent in 2020. This represents an additional 259 issues.

The Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire building in Witney

The pattern of demand changed in 2020, usually we see a spike in January, and then a fairly even spread with drops in demand during key school holidays, April, June and December.

2020 was different, with demand for our services dropping as people reduced their face-to-face contact prior to lockdown, and then April and May dropping further still.

From June onwards, we saw a steady increase in demand as rules changed and more employers started to feel the hardship of reduced business, and families struggled over the summer holidays with reduced incomes.

Whilst we are dealing with less issues, they are nonetheless complex.

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We are seeing more younger people contacting us than ever before as they are often hardest hit working in the leisure and service industries.

We are concerned that some of our clients only really engage with face-to-face services, and that they may be finding accessing any services difficult, but we are working with both West Oxfordshire District Council and a wide network of voluntary and community organisations to ensure that people have access to the advice and support they need.

We are continually reviewing the national advice and keep our clients, staff and volunteers health and wellbeing at the core of our decisions.

We hope that the vaccination programme with enable us to return to offering our face-to-face services again soon but in the meantime we are still there for everyone through our Freephone number 0808 2787908.

Details of our services are available on our website citizensadvicewestoxon.org and the national website remains the place to start if you are looking for advice: citizensadvice.org.uk

Right now, we really want people to get in touch with us if they are struggling with debt or loss of income or employment, want to reduce their energy costs, or are experiencing hardship for any reason.