Day in the life of Citizens Advice Norfolk
Peter shares an insight into his experience volunteering for Citizens Advice
My name is Peter Howard. I retired from a community organising, pastoral care role in 2016. (I was a vicar on Housing Estates for 40 years!) I have always been interested in current affairs and in retirement wanted to engage in helping people, whilst keeping my mind active.
I had already begun to think about volunteering for Citizens Advice and my wife had also suggested it to me—when in January 2019, I was on a flight from Norwich Airport to Tenerife and got chatting to my fellow passenger who turned out to be a Citizens Advice adviser in Norwich. Serendipity! I applied and began my training in May 2019. This included regular training days alongside online study and practical observation. In August, I completed the initial training and moved to the Wymondham Office (for those unfamiliar with Norfolk dialect this is pronounced Wind’m!) for further experience. I volunteer 1 day a week.
In March I had just begun solo work when the offices were closed and volunteers were requested to work digitally from home. I put my name forward and after an induction training online, I began working in my home office, which had been my now grown up daughter’s bedroom.
Here is my desk where I am being kept an eye on by my daughters childhood companions! I hope this doesn’t infringe confidentiality rules!
I began my digital work by answering email enquiries. It was interesting trying to interpret all the layers of enquiry areas that could be involved in what could appear to be a simple question. This was a really good experience, but I missed the human contact with clients and asked if I could move on to Adviceline enquiries.
A typical day
My day begins at 9am when I boot up my aged laptop. This takes about half an hour as I open the many online platforms we need to do our job. When I’ve logged into Casebook, I check to see if I have any tasks. Usually there are comments from the Wymondham Advice Coordinator (AC) on last week’s cases, usually encouraging!
Once a fortnight we have a team meeting where our AC brings us up to date with developments and we can share concerns and encouragements. It also was good to meet colleagues. I am then ready to take my first Adviceline call of the day. And so it continues (with a short break for lunch) until I write up my last case and sign off for the day, at any time between 4pm and 6pm!
The week
Yesterday was a busy day even though I only dealt with 3 clients on Advice Line. They were all employment enquiries, though they were very different and complex, involving a lot of research. 2 of them involved writing follow up emails so the clients could read the information through and do their own online study. Another 2 of the cases were as a result of the coronavirus pandemic but for different reasons.
Over the past months my cases have been diverse—including neighbourhood disputes, consumer matters, benefit advice, debt, housing and family. They’ve covered most categories on the Citizens Advice website in fact, but as team we’ve seen a surge in employment enquiries, largely as a result of the drawing to a close of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Last week I was back in the office working face-to-face, as part of our partial return. At present, in order to help with clients and cases that struggle with digital advice we are operating a reduced team, due to social distancing and other coronavirus protection measures. Volunteers come in on a rota, splitting their time between digital advice from home and face-to-face in the offices. It’s good to be back but I still enjoy the home working and intend to do both for the foreseeable future.
I am immensely grateful to Citizens Advice for bringing a new dimension to my life. Especially as it kept my mind active and in touch with people during lockdown. It’s also a welcome diversion from gardening and the reading of innumerable novels!
