2020 - 2021 Application to Yateley Town Council Organisation details Name & address of organisation: Citizens Advice Hart, Royal Oak Close, Yateley GU46 7UD Contact name:​ Julia Tymukas Contact telephone number:​ 07920045080 Contact email:​ ​[email protected] Position in organisation:​ Chief Officer Charity registration number:​ ​1113777 Aims and objectives of your organisation​; ​What does your organisation do and how does it benefit the residents of Yateley, Frogmore and Darby Green? Our Vision We give people the knowledge and confidence they need to find their way forward - whoever they are, and whatever their problem. Our Mission We do this by providing free, impartial, independent and confidential advice 1 Our Purpose ● We help people overcome their problems ● We campaign on big issues when they need to be heard ● We champion equality and challenge discrimination and harassment Citizens Advice Hart was founded in 1939 and is an independent local charity and limited company, with offices located in both Fleet and Yateley. We provide a generalist advice service which is open to the public for drop-in assessments and advice appointments at our office Monday to Thursday alongside our telephone and web chat advice. We are now providing all our services remotely until we have created a safe and sustainable office set up. Our core funding is primarily provided by Hart District Borough Council and additional support from donations. In addition to our core advice service, we run specialist projects. ▪ The Macmillan project​ - funded by Macmillan Support and provides welfare benefit advice to people in Hampshire who are affected by cancer and is a largely telephone-based service. ▪ The Homlessness Prevention Project - ​funded by Hart District Council to provide money advice to help people stay in their accommodation, thereby preventing homlessness. ▪ Help to Claim​ - funded by Department for Work and Pensions via National Citizens Advice to help people to make their initial Universal Credit claim online as fast as possible ▪ Joining Forces for Families (JFFF), ​funded by the Armed Forces Covenant and delivered in partnership by Citizens Advice Hart, Rushmoor Citizens Advice and Portsmouth Citizens Advice and covers North East Hampshire and Portsmouth and other south coast areas such as Gosport Fareham and Havant. ​ ​It aims to help serving personnel and their families with issues that are particularly impacted by military life such as financial management and debt, family 2 Governed by a board of 7 trustees, we have a highly skilled workforce to support the organisation. This includes 12 paid staff (​7.4 FTE​) and 35 volunteers. Our generalist advice service is provided by volunteers who carry out reception, advice and admin roles and are managed by paid staff. The specialist projects are delivered by paid caseworkers. Hart is often considered to be an affluent area with high levels of employment and rates of home ownership, however there are significant pockets of deprivation across the borough and our priority is to support the most vulnerable in our community. During 2019 - 20, ​3,357 ​clients benefited from the services of Citizens Advice – Hart District dealing with ​9,585​ issues. Clients continue to present with multiple problems and on average clients are presenting with almost 3 issues each. We support people on any issue that they may face however our most common enquiry issues are: Issues numbers percentage Welfare benefits and tax credits 2,195 23% Universal Credit 1,363 14% Debt 1,278 13% Employment 963 10% Housing 847 8% Relationships and family 874 9% Other 2,204 23% Using the established Citizens Advice model, that combines national research and local characteristics, ​In terms of financial value generated, for every £1 invested in our service we returned approximately £16.53 value to people we helped and £25.40 in public value. For 2019 - 20, we achieved income gain of over £500k for our clients and helped to write off over £300k of debt. 3 What percentage are Yateley, Frogmore or Darby Green residents? Citizens Advice Hart provides a Hart District wide service - proportionately Yateley, Frogmore and Darby Green residents form approximately 22% of the population of Hart clients we support. We have an office based in Yateley and Fleet. Hart had a population of 91,033 according to 2011 Census data from the Office of National Statistics. According to the same figures, Yateley had a population of 20,471. This equates to approximately 22 % of the overall population. Fleet has the largest with a population of 21,858 also according to the 2011 census data. How much funding are you applying for? £ 5,000 Project description​ f​ or which you require a grant​. Covid has been a particular challenge for the organisation this year and as a result we have moved our primarily face to face service to a remote service. Going forward we will be retaining both service models and prioritise face to face work for our most vulnerable and digitally excluded residents. The complexity of the issues that clients are facing, and the additional challenges that clients are experiencing, places increasing demands on our service. In the post Covid era it will be challenging to find the right balance between the growing demand for remote channel access like phone, email and web chat and meeting the needs of our more vulnerable clients who require face to face consultations to help resolve their more complex problems. The availability of funding, technology and volunteer resources will all have an impact on our ability to deliver the right service to the right people. We are seeking your support this year to start this process. With the announcement of lockdown in the last week of March 2020 ● All Citizens Advice face to face services ceased in both Fleet and Yateley ● All paid staff moved to home working (using their own personal equipment) and online solutions were set up to provide a remote service to the public. (We have since gained funding to purchase laptops for all our paid staff to work remotely and we are currently planning to provide IT support to our volunteer team as well - currently they are using their own equipment.) 4 ● Two weeks later some of our volunteers also started home working - 50% of our volunteers were unable to return. ● Throughout Lockdown our staff and volunteers have continued to provide a remote service via telephone, email and web chat. Comparing Quarter 1 & 2 (April to September) 2019 - 20 with the same period this year ● We met 80% of demand through our remote service with 50% less volunteers (trained assessors and advisers providing our service). ● The demographic of people using our service has changed significantly - Prior to the first lockdown the age profile for our clients was 33% of over 65’s and less than 15% of each of the other age groups. Since March 2020 this percentage has changed fundamentally with the proportion of over 65’s now at 16% with working age grouping increasing indicating that the older age group are significantly impacted by the loss of face to face appointments and the drop in facility. So although we are not meeting those clients that are not able to access us remotely we have expanded our younger client base by providing an expanded telephone service. We are expanding our referral partners to identify with other agencies any potentially vulnerable clients who may be assisted to contact us via remote channels. ● younger people are accessing our remote service in increasing numbers and people in older age brackets have declined. ● We have expanded our channels for advice provision - pre Covid 58% of Yateley clients accessed our service via face to face and 28% of our service was accessed via telephone. Since Covid with no access to our face to face service 66% of Yateley clients accessed the service via our telephone. Our service at Yateley was heavily dependant on face to face so we did not believe this shift to online services was possible prior to Covid Two significant issues emerge for our service which we are seeking your support for 1. Return to the office​ to provide a face to face service for those unable to use digital channels - this requires additional resource to ensure we 5 are providing a safe environment for staff, volunteers and the public 2. Training more volunteers​ to replace those that we have lost and to boost our team to meet the increasing demand as a result of Covid i.e. people need advice on employment, Universal Credit, Debt, family breakdown etc - this requires additional paid resources. 1. Return to the Office With still no certainty about returning to “normal” we want to ● Conduct face to face appointments with vulnerable clients who are unable to use other channels ● Expand our remote service to include video appointments so that vulnerable clients can see the advice provider and show documents. To do this we need to make our offices safe for staff, volunteers and clients - this would include: ● Installation of plastic screening and sanitisation stations. ● Provision of facemasks ● Setting up regular cleaning procedures ● Increase office cleaning ● Smaller staff and volunteer teams in the offices ● Less interview rooms available to ensure clients are separated from advisor with communication via video conferencing ● New office layout to ensure social distancing We are requesting £2,500 for the cost of partitioning - materials and installation​ (we received 3 quotes and the cheapest quote was £2,500 per office.) 2. Training more volunteers In order to meet the increasing demand for our service and to make up for the loss of volunteers as a result of Covid and lockdown we need to increase our volunteer advice team by investing in training and supervision staff. Without the contribution of our volunteers our service would not operate.