We’re looking for four new trustees — come and join us

EVERY day over the last 20 months I’ve been proud to work as Chief Executive here at Citizens Advice Wokingham.

As we begin our search for four new trustees to join our board, I wanted to tell why I think you’ll be joining a great charity and some of the challenges we face.

What is Citizens Advice Wokingham?

We are a small charity making a big difference. We have 80 volunteers, 12 part-time staff and eight trustees.

We exist because people in our communities often need a helping hand — some because there has been a significant impact on their life, others need regular support. Our service is free, confidential, impartial and available for all.

Last year, we supported 2,585 people with 7,017 issues. Securing £606,530 of income gain and £298,511 of debts written off.

Our top five issues for clients were Benefits and tax credits, Universal Credit, Housing, Relationships and family, and Debt.

Our core service provides advice and information on a wide range of areas including welfare benefits, debt, housing, employment law, consumer, relationships and families. We provide this through two offices in Wokingham and Woodley, a five-day a week adviceline and in pop-up locations in all 17 parish and town councils.

We equip people with the advice, information and support that they need to move forward.

We also campaign for change, through our volunteer research and campaigns team.

We also have projects such as:

Home visitors — a new 12- month project funded by Wokingham United Charities and The National Lottery Community Fund — two part-time staff will provide complex casework support to vulnerable individuals and families in their homes and communities across the borough

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA)— a project funded by Berkshire Community Foundation. To ensure we can better understand and respond to those experiencing mental health problems

Our response to Covid-19 Way-back in mid-March, we started working with Wokingham Borough Council and lots of brilliant local charities, community groups, religious groups and parish and town councils to form the Voluntary Sector Action Group.

From that, we put ourselves forward to run a One Front Door for anyone who needs help during the pandemic.

Our volunteers and staff, working with re-deployed council staff took to the phones from over 90 homes across the county to support people, assessing what help they need and who could provide it.

This included food deliveries, furlough advice and even helping getting a smoke alarm changed.

The challenges we face

We want to have more voices, backgrounds and experiences at the table — helping to drive our agenda. We will focus on, with your help, building a great team of trustees.

We want to be the go-to charity for anyone across our communities who are facing problems.

We do not have a monopoly on helping people — we are a generalist advice and information service but our team have the skills and training to triage and assess needs of clients.

Effective partnerships are key in this, ensuring that our clients get the support they need will always be at the top of our agenda.

We need stability to survive and thrive. Almost all of our project funds end within the next nine–12 months. We are confident that we will continue to secure support next year — but we need to think differently to ensure there is longevity in what we do .

Why join us?

The team demonstrated how brilliant that they are through the coronavirus pandemic, with no pause or suspension in our core services

In our annual people survey in 2019, 98% of our staff and volunteers said that they would recommend this as a place to work or volunteer (up from 83% in 2018).

We are shaping our services regularly to ensure they are as meaningful and effective as possible for the people who need it.

For the last two years running we have scored the highest possible score in our annual audit from national Citizens Advice to retain our membership, scoring 5s all round (excellent) in all nine leadership areas, including people management, governance, financial management, operational performance and equality leadership.

We have a highly skilled and supportive board of trustees, ready to support new trustees.

Funders like us — and you would hope so! Our core funder classes us as a high performing contract, and we are open with funders about when things are not working, how we could do things differently and always going that extra mile.

We also think other charities like us! We have worked hard over the last two years to build relationships, and recently we were voted in joint second place to receive £12,500 of unrestricted funds, voted for by the 11 other local charities in the room.

We are putting mental health at the centre of our strategy — we will deliver Mental Health First Aid training to all of our team.

We also put wellbeing at the heart of our day-to-day work, empowering our staff and volunteers to lead a new wellbeing group.

Our goal is to secure Investors in People accreditation soon.

There is so much more I could say about what we are doing, about our impact and the reasons you should join.

If you are looking to have a key influential role in supporting our communities, give this role a thought.

We operate an open door policy for anyone who wants to find out more about our services — get in touch if you would like to visit and meet me and my colleagues.

We are not specifying skill gaps — because this can be learnt. We want to hear from a wide range of people, including those who have never been a trustee before — or never even given it a thought.

You’re not left alone to figure this all out, you’ll be helped by a supportive board of trustees and a passionate management team.

To arrange an informal chat with one of our trustees or find out more information, email admin@ citizensadvicewokingham.org.uk or call 0118 978 7258.

If you are interested in applying — please submit a letter to our email above just outlining why you want to join our charity and information about you so that we can review and make contact.

For more about about work, visit our website www. citizensadvicewokingham.org.uk