Citizen’s Advice Growing due to COVID-19.

How the long term effects of the pandemic will affect ‘Citizens Advice’.

Leslie Redwood, CEO of ‘Citizens Advice’ tells us that, due to COVID-19, ‘Citizen’s Advice’ has been rewired to be externally facing and is now working with more third sector partners. In taking a positive from the negativity of the pandemic, the charity has been able to gain new partnerships and funding, pushing them into a growth phase.

These partnerships are used to lighten the load and now ‘Citizens Advice’ are able to refer out to partners and charities who are better positioned and have better resources. For example, when ‘Citizens Advice’ receive pleas for help from people struggling with health, housing and money, they can refer to their partners so that the people in need are able to receive the best help they can possibly get that they may not have been able to receive otherwise.

The charity has also received great support from the government nationwide so they are now able to provide a far better service. They are concerned explicitly with debt advice and predict a 60% increase in debt advice needs and so have increased the number of people in their debt advice team to be able to help people more proficiently.

They also predict there will be a higher demand for employability assistance as people are starting their own businesses or switching careers due to redundancy and so will be using their partnership with Achieve in BANES to respond to demands and give people the aid they need.

Listen to Leslie Redwood talk more below.

Words by Lauren Forester