Citizens Advice North East Suffolk is an independent charity that provides free, confidential and impartial advice to everyone on their rights and responsibilities. We are part of a national network that delivers advice across England and Wales overseen by a national framework provided by Citizens Advice that universally values diversity promotes equality and challenges discrimination.
The service aims are:
• To provide the advice people need for the problems they face
• To improve the policies and practices that affect people’s lives.
In furtherance of these aims we provide holistic, quality assured advice across a wide range of subjects most often in the area known as social welfare law that includes entitlements to state benefits, housing issues, personal debt, employment rights, family matters and discrimination etc. The advice delivered provides clients with the best opportunity to make informed choices and decisions that help them solve their problems, sustain their well-being and achieve financial independence.
In addition to the overarching objectives that underpin everything we do, we also;
We provide the quality assured advice that helps people solve their problems and find a way forward. Typically these problems are social welfare concerns such as issues at work, with the state benefits system, paying back debts or matters to do with housing. Our qualified Advisers will deal with any inter-related problems, over and above the initial challenge a client may be facing, as we are able to propose a holistic, wrap-around solution that few other service providers can offer under one roof.
Through the advice we give we can mitigate the detrimental impact of problem issues that are holding people back and preventing them taking up their full place in society.
Prior to advice people can be facing real financial hardship or feeling powerless and are often anxious, putting relationships under strain both at home and work. After advice, not only can our support benefit people with confirmation of their rights, a sounder financial position or perhaps even a more secure home, we can lessen their anxieties, improve their general well-being and provide them with a new sense of purpose going forward.
We use a range of methods to help people access our services such as drop-in sessions at our offices, on-line or by telephone, and have a deliberate strategy to help our clients build their own capacity, empowering them to avoid issues in the future, and particularly instilling money management skills. We have extensive local knowledge, invest time in local networking and utilise many local volunteers with their valuable range of life experiences. With our sophisticated case reporting and data collection software we can log all cases, observe trends and measure outcomes such as financial gains achieved, as well as show how our service contributes to local and national public policy objectives.
