24/10/2007
Report on our services 2006/07

SPEKE ADVICE SERVICE

working with local people

to make advice accessible

A WORD FROM THE CHAIR

Speke CAB has had a successful two years – consolidating the quality of our advice work, improving access to help from our specialist services and – jointly with our partners in other local agencies - beginning a range of new initiatives to help people withcommunity finance and banking issues.
With relatively basic core funding we have attracted additional projects from the Financial Inclusion Fund for debt advisers and financial awareness work. We are also about to launch a free Independent Financial Adviser’s surgery for local people and have received joint funding for work with the Riverside Credit Union.
I am glad to say many of our volunteers have left …. to get paid jobs! Our volunteer team is growing and we see our role in providing high quality training and experience to local people as an important part of what we do well. Five of our volunteers are now working in the advice sector. Looking forward we are in a position as long as our core funding remains in place, to take on high-quality additional work targeted on the needs our profiling work has identified. We value our friends and partners locally and see most of our initiatives as involving working closely together – Speke is an isolated area with an extremely high need for advice services and we are determined that together we can make a real difference.

What this means in practice is that as well as advising individuals, the CAB service works to influence positive social change at local and national level on behalf of all its clients.

CAB services are free, confidential, independent and impartial.

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity through positive action and by challenging discrimination.

The Speke area.

In the shadow of the Ford Car Plant and next to Liverpool’s John Lennon airport - Speke lies eight miles south of Liverpool city centre and contains one of the largest housing estates in England, with 4,800 dwellings mainly built in the 1930s and a declining “stay-behind” population of around 10,300 people. Speke experiences significant levels of social and economic deprivation.

In 2006 mean household income in Speke was just £16,000, 28% below the Liverpool average. Over 50% of households experience limiting long term illness and property prices are less than half the average for the city. Educational attainment is a third lower than for Liverpool. The incidence of crime is 11% higher. Minority ethnic groups comprise 3.6% of the population, (8.2% in Liverpool overall).

Speke CAB’s 2006 client profile based on CASE monitoring data indicated that 57% were social tenants. 43% of clients described themselves as disabled and 50.2% were entirely dependent on benefits. 72% of social tenants are aged over 50.

According to Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Speke is the second most deprived electoral ward in England and Wales. In addition to deprivation Speke has the added disadvantage of limited local services and a feeling of isolation.

In 2005/06 we dealt with 3733 enquiries (each of these usually involves about an hours work) and 1004 on-going cases. We assisted clients in claiming at least £841,411 in additional benefits and handled over £826,627 in debt. We assisted clients with 78 appeal hearings or court appearances.

Much of this work was done by our volunteers who gave 7370 hours - to employ people to do this work would cost around £110,550 (using the European Funding Formula).

Of our clients and cases 1019 were to help people with disability or long-term illness. 91 of the people we assisted in 2005/06 came to us concerning a mental health issue. Around 3% of our clients are from a black or ethnic minority background.

2006/07.

In the first three quarters of 2006/07 we had already seen an increased number (4323) of clients and on-going cases and handled over £1,225,556 in debt.

The advice we give:

Speke CAB routinely provides information and advice on the following subjects:

• Benefits
• Debt
• Housing
• Consumer
• Relationship/family
• Immigration/nationality
• Taxation
• Legal proceedings

In the majority of instances the CAB adviser will make phone calls or write letters to negotiate on behalf of a client. It is now very rare that our clients simply require basic information – the National Citizens Advice Internet Service – Advice Guide (at www.adviceguide.org.uk ) is often used directly by the public for straightforward information. When legal representation or highly specialised advice is required our advisers arrange appropriate referrals or use Citizens Advice national consultancy lines. In the previous two years are statistical recording has shown a dramatic increase in the complexity of advice required by clients.

Case records and correspondence

Keeping confidential case records and managing correspondence is a huge task. In 2005/06 the Bureau records went all-electronic on the CAB “CASE” system as part of the “Citizens Connect” national intranet scheme. The electronic system allows us to capture more hard data about clients more effectively and to ensure rapid retrieval of all client records to help in advice casework.

We sent out or received around 5100 items of correspondence in 2005/06.

Quality of advice

The quality of advice is monitored by weekly case-checking and we are independently audited by the National Association of CABx to ensure we meet the community Legal Service Quality Mark and the stringent CAB Membership Requirements.

In October 2006 we scored a successful full-pass at our audit with a high quality of advice score of 82%. The audit report found “Advisers provide a high level of good quality practical support, and were pro-active on behalf of clients.”

Where we give advice:

The main bureau

Our premises next to the Surestart Centre in Conleach Road are our main service delivery site. We are fully accessible on a single floor-level for clients and staff. Our main problem has been lack of space to accommodate our volunteers and staff and sometimes we run out of interview rooms.

Outreach.

We have carried out outreach sessions at Speke House (Sheltered Accommodation), Riverside Credit Union (every Friday morning), and at Surestart. During Tax Credit Take Up project in 2006 we also carried out sessions at the Parklands Community café. We enjoyed having a stall at the Speke Carnival

Telephone Services.

Under the umbrella of Liverpool Specialist Advice service (LSAS) the seven CAB in Liverpool have set up a virtual call centre to provide a central CAB advice line on 0844 848 7700. This is in addition to calls direct to the Bureau.

Speke CAB’s Projects and Specialised Services.

Community Help With Computers (IT)

With thanks to the Awards for All fund who have part funded Johann Wierzbicki our Community Computers Support Officer and to our partners in Health Energy Advice Team, Surestart and Garston and Netherley CABx.

Johann Wierzbicki was appointed as the support worker – Johann has a background in restaurant catering and in Information Technology and has excellent people skills. As soon as he was appointed Johann was in demand. Surestart in Speke have an internet facility in their community café and Johann gave informal support to the parents using this facility. Almost always this led on to wider issues about using computers in the local library, at home, in the school community facilities. The Surestart staff began to use Johann for all sorts of support and a really good relationship has developed.
The Riverside Community Credit Union in Speke needed a website – this is now underway with Johann helping design and set up the site. Netherley CAB replaced its computers and set up an office network – Johann’s main role here was to advise on technical specifications and find reasonably priced equipment – then to install it all and train the staff to use it !

The Health and Energy Advice Team (HEAT) have run an employment placement scheme and Johann was key in helping placements to start with IT skills – again this often led into Johann helping with home computers and finding appropriate equipment and software or training for people (such as free ECDL.) Johann gave induction sessions on IT to all new and existing CAB volunteers at Speke and several from other sister-CABx.
Garston Community Council and Speke residents linked to the GCC drew on the project – in particular over troublesome printers and designing networks. One of the in-house jokes is that Johann’s mobile number is the best known number in Speke – it never stops ringing !
We really found that this model of providing informal IT help worked well. People in the local community can’t expect to pay for IT consultants and shops and manufacturers haven’t got the incentive to chat and to show people how to do things or where free or cheap access or equipment is. The project has helped at least 105 people directly and probably more, but above all it has increased confidence in the use of IT for many people in Speke.

Our financial awareness project began in 2004 and has been funded for three years by the Legal Service Commission Partnership Innovation budget. Brenda McKenzie has been the Project worker from 2005. The Project runs financial awareness sessions for groups and individuals – raising their awareness of issues involved in the cost of credit, consumer rights, budgeting, investments and pensions planning. Brenda also provides training at second tier level so that the people working with various groups can in future repeat the sessions provided and reach an on-going number of clients We provide mainly accredited (AQA, ASDAm, NVQ) first and second tier training to a strong network of partners.
In addition to work with Surestart, schools, young people’s organisations and training agencies the Bureau is providing financial skills sessions to new tenants for South Liverpool Housing and regular training for persistent and serious on Young Offenders Liverpool Youth Offending Teams ISSP programme.

The Project has worked with persistent and serious young offenders on the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme since March 2006 - nearly half the young people on this programme were recorded as living in a disadvantaged household. .
We have built up a reputation over the last three years resulting in provider’s regularity contacting us asking for courses to be delivered.

Speke CAB have identified suitable opportunities of further training and events for providers. Examples of this are the programme being run by PFEG and Kikass.tv. Going forward – we have been asked by SLH to design a course to be used for new tenants and we are exploring how we can expand the range of students we cover. One of the groups we would like to deliver to are lone parents.

Financial Inclusion Fund - Community Banking in partnership with Riverside Credit Union and Salford University.

In 2006 Speke Cab was awarded two years funding from the DTI’s Financial Inclusion Fund for a part time money advice worker to improve access to money advice for Speke residents – particularly members and customers of the local Credit Union and people excluded from mainstream finance. Salford University co-ordinates this national project and provides support and facilitates action learning sessions. Yvonne Underwood is the project worker at Speke.

As part of the Community Banking initiative Speke Cab has developed a close collaboration and joint-project working with Riverside Credit Union and the wider Credit Union movement and there is potential for networking over financial skills training within the Liverpool credit union movement alongside links involving Independent Financial Advice from the Moneyplan project and on-going liaison over money advice funded from FiF.

Financial Inclusion Fund - The Greater Merseyside Money Advice Consortium.

In partnership with over 20 Merseyside advice agencies, law centres and CABx Speke CAB were awarded funding for a full time debt advice worker for two years – again from the DTIs Financial Inclusion Fund. Kristie Johnson was appointed in June 2006 and sees clients who would not be eligible for Legal Service Commission help due to the means test for legal aid.

Liverpool Specialist Advice Service

Speke CAB is a member of Liverpool Specialist Advice Service – the bureau manager acts ex officio as a Board Trustee for LSAS. Rachel Mahon is the specialist money adviser based half-time at Speke with Margaret Taylor as administrative support.

LSAS enables the bureau to make referrals for specialist help in welfare rights, and housing and facilitates the LCATS city-wide telephone service.

Solicitors Rota for free initial advice

There is no solicitor’s office in Speke and the nearest is in Hunts Cross about three miles away. Partly to help compensate for this, Speke CAB has run a volunteer solicitor rota at the Bureau for just over five years. Over that time a number of firms have participated – currently two firms provide the personnel for a fortnightly surgery. Other firms are canvassed annually to see if they would like to participate. If a new firm appears we check with Law Society Registration.
We are extremely grateful to the solicitors firms on our rota who have assisted a large number of Speke people over the five years :

Globe Wareing and Cropper Solicitors,
96 Hillfoot Avenue, L25 0PF
tel.0151 486 8833

Moore Sexton Bibby
329 Aigburth Road, L17 0BL
tel. 0151 727 0100

Reaching Specific Groups within our Community

Tax Credit Take Up Campaign (Citizens Advice and HM Revenue & Customs)
This project ran in Spring 2006 and assisted 76 local people to claim an additional £51,069 in tax credits.
The Project worker attended community cafes and other venues to promote tax credit take up and give advice on related issues.

Surestart Project

Our Surestart Project worker, Tracy Cave completed this project early in 2006 which provided advice and support to One Parent families in partnership with Surestart Speke.

Older Persons Project

This highly successful project which obtained over a million pounds in additional social security benefits for older people in Speke was concluded in early 2006.

Our Social Policy Work

As well as providing advice, Cab works to positively influence policies and practices, basing our comment on evidence from our clients.

To do this we attend liaison meetings with Jobcentre Plus, the Local Authority (Benefits) and other agencies. Our social policy returns to the national Citizens Advice organisation allow us to feed into the wider media and in 2006 we contributed to TV coverage and other reportage on access to banking and illegal money lending.

Jackie McCoy is our current Social Policy co-ordinator (volunteer) and has helped us co-ordinate work on evictions and homelessness, consumer issues, difficulties accessing the social fund crisis loan claim line, tax credit overpayments and disputes over door to door selling of legal advice on home purchase.

Volunteers and Staff

Andrew Wilson became Bureau manager in October 2005. Bob Wilson is our Supervisor and Sharon Mitchell the office manager. Suzzanne Moore and Karen MacDonald work wonders as administrative officers.

Our long serving volunteers Karen Fowler, Alan Fong and Colin Upton (welfare rights) Jackie McCoy and Joe Dummett give a huge number of hours between them and have recently been joined by Peter Collier, Shirley Cors and Louise Jacks with some kind help from Alison Power and Ruth Knox. Catherine Tollitt is our newest administrative volunteer.

We are always looking for additional volunteers. Anyone interested in training as an advice worker should contact the Manager for more details – usually the first step is to be invited in for an informal chat.

Trustees

The trustees of Speke Advice Service are also volunteers. The Trustee Board meets around eight times a year and is responsible for the overall strategic and financial management of the organisation. Our current board have skills in fundraising, business planning, advice work management, finance, community work and law. In the two years covered by this review our Trustees have been : Bob Towers, Father Ed Cain, Dave Hunt, Gillian Bundred, Ruth Livesey, Lisa McMullan, Frances Hunt and also Colin Upton has served as staff representative.

In addition to our regular cycle of planning and review our trustees and key staff have held a number of planning and away days in 2006 and 2007 to look at the way forward for our service. Our current business plan gives detailed targets for two years and outline objectives to 2012.

We prepare and review profiles of the communities within our primary catchment area and compare this with the people who currently access our services. This provides us with an objective basis
for planning which additional services we need to provide.

Currently we are particularly aware that :

Low income savers and borrowers in Speke are some of the most financially excluded people in the UK

Speke CAB is focusing on financial exclusion, dealing with debt access to banking and community finance – working closely with our partners including Surestart, Riverside Credit Union and South Liverpool Housing.

A high proportion of the Speke population is over 50.

Speke CAB is focusing on services appropriate for older people and nearing-retirement issues

Access to many services now involves phone-systems, electronic methods and information technology.

Speke CAB is focusing on supporting local people with help to access large organisations’ call-centres, computer bases IT and electronic means of payment.

Take up of many benefits, tax credits and awareness and enforcement of other rights is low in Speke – partly because of the difficulty many people experience understanding and dealing with forms.

Speke CAB is focusing on targeted awareness work and publicity, providing assistance with forms and suitable advocacy. Creating and empowering small groups and networks in the community can help with this.

Speke has a high proportion of its working population in low paid, insecure and part-time employment.

Speke CAB is focusing on providing accessible generalist level advice on employment and pay/tax credit issues and ensuring referral to high quality specialist advice is available.

Our thanks to all those organisations, small and large who have helped to fund our service to people here in Speke

Liverpool City Council
Citizens Advice Bureau Support Fund – Training
Citizens Advice – Tax Credit Take Up
Surestart
Legal Service Commission (PIB fund)
South Liverpool PCT
South Liverpool Regeneration Fund
Social Inclusion Fund DTI - Community Banking
Social Inclusion Fund DTI – Greater Merseyside Money Advice Consortium
Glaxo Smith Kline
Eleanor Rathbone Foundation
Francis Winham Foundation
Donations from local people
Awards For All

Trustees

Robert Towers
Ruth Livesey
Lisa McMullan
Frances Hunt
Fr Edward Cain
David Hunt
Gillian Bundred

Company Secretary

Andrew Wilson

25/06/2007

Speke CAB Financial Literacy Trainer Brenda McKenzie is organising a training event (with free coffee and lunch) in Surestart Family Centre Cafe on July 5th. For further details, Click Here

01/12/2005

Andrew Wilson took the post of Manager at Speke CAB from October 10th 2005.

Andrew can be contacted anytime regarding bureau matters at AndrewWilson[at]spekecab.org.uk

01/12/04

Note of telephone scams currently in operation.......

We have received information about a couple of telephone scams that are currently in operation. These apply to home and work telephones - land lines and mobiles.

"If you do receive one of these calls, upon answering the telephone, you will hear a recorded message congratulating you on winning an all expenses trip to an exotic location. You will then be asked to press 9 to hear further details. If you press 9 you will be connected to a premium rate line that costs approximately £20 per minute. Even if you disconnect immediately, it will remain connected for a minimum of 5 minutes, costing around £100. The final part of the call involves you being asked to key your postcode and house number (which has other serious consequences).

After a further 2 minutes you will receive a message informing you that you are not one of the lucky winners.

The total bill will be £260.

Since the calls are originating from outside the UK, BT and othertelephone companies are left relatively powerless to act. The only safe solution is to HANG UP before the message prompts you to press 9; even safer is to HANG UP on any unsolicited 'free offer' call. This appears to be a variation on a theme, warnings have been sent previously regarding calls made by individuals claiming to be engineers conducting a test on the line and asking for 9, 0# and text messages similar to the routine described above. DO NOT DIAL 9 (OR 9,0# OR 0,9#) FOR ANYONE! BT has been contacted and confirmed the details as being true.

There is another scam operating on Mobile Phones.

A Missed Call comes up. The number is 0709 020 3840. The last four numbers may vary but certainly the first four numbers will remain the same. If you call this number back, you will be charged £50 per minute. People have complained about their phone bills, once they have realised the cost of the call but apparently this is completely legal. So beware, do not call back numbers beginning with 0709.

Please pass this information on to your family and friends.

29/10/04

The Financial Skills project has received funding from the DWP, the funding is to design and deliver a range of workshops to groups, community organisations and individuals focusing on basic bank accounts and different account options; the way benefits are paid to our clients is changing and we want to ensure they are enabled to manage their affairs effectively by understanding all of the account options available to them. We also aim to work with the local Banks, Post Office and Credit Union to improve accessibility to their services.

The project held its official launch on 28th October, it was well attended by the Pension Service, the DWP and local community representatives. If you would like to arrange a skills session for your group you can contact Jenny Hickson on 0151 486 8545 (ext 502).

Caryn Matthews Bureau Manager, Jenny Hickson, Financial Skills Tutor and Maria Eagle MP.

16/07/04

Speke Citizens Advice Bureau has officially moved to the new premises. You will find our new contact details and how to get to the CAB in the Contact section.

23/04/04

The building work is on schedule, the Speke CAB will be moving to the new
Surestart Speke Building in mid july...

31/03/2004

We just have received 3 years funding from Community Legal Services to provide basic Financial Skills to young people in the South Liverpool area.
The project is running in collaboration with North Liverpool CAB and Croxteth under 25's advice team.