Last year Citizens Advice Wirral serviced, advised and supported nearly 15,000 people. As soon as the Covid-19 lockdown was announced in March 2020 they converted their entire service to home working, without any break in service. Thousands of clients have been supported in a variety of ways and their support has helped clients through some of the most difficult and challenging times.
Citizens Advice Wirral’s good news story from 2020
“We have 143 staff and volunteers across different projects and last year we supported nearly 15,000 people. It’s been very challenging and using the Policy in Practice calculator has made it more manageable for the different types of advisors advising the client. It’s much quicker to do a calculation, you don’t need training sessions and a client can use it themselves and contact us if they get stuck. It’s much easier to use.
Sue McCarron, Ask Us Wirral Service Manager, Citizens Advice Wirral
Although we were using another benefits calculator it didn’t give us all we needed to support our clients.
With so many clients being furloughed, having a reduction in hours of employment or being made redundant, Policy in Practice’s Better Off Calculator has proven really valuable in ensuring we can support our clients by looking at their income and potential entitlement to benefits.
We looked at a variety of tools and felt this met our needs the most and our advisers felt it was very easy to use.
We are able to support clients with a range of benefit and budgeting calculations.
This is a great tool… well worth the investment.
Our service has always been very forward-thinking and innovative, but I was surprised by how quickly we were able to adapt our service to comply with Covid 19 restrictions and how readily our clients accepted changes to service delivery, such as telephone, digital and Face2Face video conferencing.
Like many other local Citizens Advice we are seeing a record number of clients needing our support. As a voluntary organisation we are so proud that so many of our volunteers have continued to support us; without their contribution we would not have been able to assist so many clients during Covid. Through continuous communication and offering support, our volunteers have readily adapted to the changes in our service delivery.
“The Better Off Calculator makes it much quicker to do calculations and the tooltips make it easy to use, meaning we only need to train people once. The simplicity of the calculator means that clients can often self serve with little support.”
Sue McCarron, Ask Us Wirral Service Manager, Citizens Advice Wirral