People in the Wallingford and Didcot areas sinking under mountains of debt are being thrown a lifeline by the local Citizens' Advice Bureau.

For the first time, the bureau has an independent financial adviser to help people cope with their problems.

Manager Judith Abela said that in a move to tackle debt, she was targeting young people in schools to give them advice on money matters and prevent them getting into difficulty in future.

She is also setting up savings workshops to help people save for special occasions such as Christmas, and to prevent business failures, like the Farepak collapse, hitting vulnerable people.

Ms Abela said: "We get a tremendous number of inquiries about debt.

"Figures show that debt is one of the biggest areas being dealt with by Citizens' Advice Bureaux.

"We are currently working on new strategies concerning everything that volunteers have to deal with.

"We are setting up projects to deal with debt and we want to work to prevent people getting into money difficulties in the first place.

"This is why we now have our own independent financial adviser, why we are setting up savings workshops and why we are co-operating with local schools to instil financial awareness at an early age."

Ms Abela is manager of the Didcot branch, housed in the Civic Hall, and which also has an office in the Bullcroft, Wallingford, and at RAF Benson.

She stressed that the financial adviser, Deborah Simon, was a volunteer at the centre and would not be selling anyone anything.

She said the first venture into schools will be at Didcot Girls' School but she hopes to be involved with other schools within the next year.