Citizen’s Advice here to help through crisis
The steps we have taken to beat the current lockdown to give you advice
Read about the steps our CAB service has taken to beat the lockdown,
The new year is the perfect time to reflect on the past 12 months and plan for the future. So we thought we would use this opportunity to do the same.
Our chief officer Sandy O’Neill recently gave an interview in the Star and Crescent, November 2020, (please check it out) and the quote at the end of this piece is from that article.
Clearly 2020 was dominated by Covid-19 and unsurprisingly Portsmouth Citizens Advice saw an increase in clients asking for our help. In that first lockdown, despite the many challenges, our team:
Significantly increased its efforts to provide support for our community; for example, we moved to flexitime working so we could be contacted over a longer period of time
Worked extremely hard to assimilate the large amount of information that was changing daily, in order to give timely, quality advice to our clients
In just two weeks transformed our face-to-face office advice service, to a phone/email home-based delivery model
But we realised there were vulnerable members of our community who potentially couldn’t access us remotely and so we moved a small team back into the office to run a limited drop-in and appointment service. These clients can now use a room with a computer screen and talk to one of our specialist advisors working from home. Or they can have a face-to-face meeting in a Covid-safe environment.
We are still in the throes of the pandemic. We expect another peak of people asking for help because protective legislation put in place for those renting and those with debts is going to be lifted. We have worked hard to get grants to increase our resources and our capacity to deal with this situation – people often don’t realise we are a charity and don’t receive any funding from our council.
We are fortunate, however, because Portsmouth is an extremely community-minded city. It is, as Sandy reported, ‘…full of passionate people who are really proud of their history who really want to help each other. I’ve seen that [in] a lot in the work I’ve been doing with Citizens Advice, we’ve asked the community to come in and help with things. I’m incredibly proud to be a part of it; it’s that kind of community feeling Portsmouth [has] that makes people so much more prepared to give and to work to make it better. I call it the power of Portsmouth’.
We look forward to a more positive year in 2021 and remember, we are here to support you.
Life is complicated – we can help. We’re part of a network of charities, a community – we provide free and confidential advice. People rely on us because we’re independent and impartial.