Help- I am sick with worry

Fran

Margaret,

I think the main thing about CAB work is knowing where to point people for them to get the best help and knowing where to look in CAB info.

Glad you got involved with adult literacy and found a good friend. You shouldn't feel guilty because you have contributed!

I think we should get off crutches' thread.... if you want to carry this on you could start a thread on discussion board (?)

crutches

i dont mind ...its interesting andexplainsa lot!

Bossyboots

Its people using the CAB who can honestly pay for advice from a solicitor who really annoy me. They clog up the system and stop the really needy from having ready access. Mind you, its these same people whose first statement on contacting a solicitor is "I want legal aid for this".

Fran

Anyone has a right to CAB advice, one of its Aims & Principles is that it is available to all people.

In fact, it's very rare that people with lots of money are "clogging up the system" - most of the clients I saw/spoke to clearly did not have money or had a sudden change of circumstances which is why they have their debt/housing/benefits/employment etc. problem in the first place.

Bossyboots

Fran wrote:

Anyone has a right to CAB advice, one of its Aims & Principles is that it is available to all people.

In fact, it's very rare that people with lots of money are "clogging up the system" - most of the clients I saw/spoke to clearly did not have money or had a sudden change of circumstances which is why they have their debt/housing/benefits/employment etc. problem in the first place.

That may be the case in your area but local to me everyone wants everything for nothing and there are people doing what I have described. It might be the Aims and Principles of the CAB to be available to everyone but surely common decency dictates that if you have an alternative, you leave services like the CAB for those people you have described who have found themselves in difficulties. It really upsets me when desparate people are trawling our town looking for help because they can't get an appointment at the CAB and then you come across someone with a good income who has been using the CAB as a means to avoiding paying for legal advice.

margaretclare

Bossyboots wrote:

That may be the case in your area but local to me everyone wants everything for nothing and there are people doing what I have described. It might be the Aims and Principles of the CAB to be available to everyone but surely common decency dictates that if you have an alternative, you leave services like the CAB for those people you have described who have found themselves in difficulties. It really upsets me when desparate people are trawling our town looking for help because they can't get an appointment at the CAB and then you come across someone with a good income who has been using the CAB as a means to avoiding paying for legal advice.

I can't be sure that this has been the case where I've been volunteering, but certainly, it has seemed to me that more and more people are coming asking for unreasonable things, as in the few examples I've already given, and that quite often people's problems have been of their own making (not a reason for not helping them, perhaps...it's very arguable). I've pointed people to a local solicitor and have received the reply 'oh, but that will cost money'. Now, whether that is because they genuinely have a low income or whether they really do want what they perceive as a 'free service' and a 'right', I can't say.

I could give numerous instances of people being, as I perceive it, completely unreasonable, demanding an easy answer to a problem which by its very nature, doesn't have any easy answer. We were asked to complete a questionnaire recently and in this it said that CAB was being stretched beyond its limits and used to fill gaps it was never designed to fill - did we think that CAB should return to its core i.e. dealing with 5 types of problem: benefits, relationships, employment, housing and consumer. And yes, I do think so.

We're fortunate in that we do have a Money Advice Centre in the Civic Centre which deals exclusively with debt, so we refer people there. And we refer to Shelter, the homeless centre, an advocacy service for older people and a volunteer service for the disabled. And we still had 8 people in the waiting-room half-an-hour before closing time on Thursday and Friday!

Aunty Margaret

jellyhead

WHAT FALLS UNDER CONSUMER? (I'M THICK!). sorry about caps! don't citizens advice do a lot of debt work? i know a few people who always get their water bills paid by citizens advice - apparently you have a fund for paying off bills for people who get into a situation where they'll be cut off.

Fran

jellyhead wrote:

WHAT FALLS UNDER CONSUMER? (I'M THICK!). sorry about caps! don't citizens advice do a lot of debt work? i know a few people who always get their water bills paid by citizens advice - apparently you have a fund for paying off bills for people who get into a situation where they'll be cut off.

Consumer is usually (in my experience) things like... "this man came to my door and I signed for information and suddenly I've changed suppliers" or "I bought a van from a man and the engine's dropped out" - all sorts of consumer issues.

The main areas of CAB work are Debt, Benefits, Housing, Employment, Consumer.

There is no such CAB fun for paying water bills. They might have been referred or helped to fill in a form such as the Severn Trent Trust Fund which does have money to help people with water bill problems but it's nothing to do with CAB and is seperate from Severn Trent Water authority.

margaretclare

jellyhead wrote:

WHAT FALLS UNDER CONSUMER? (I'M THICK!). sorry about caps! don't citizens advice do a lot of debt work?

Well, we're lucky to have the Money Advice Centre in the Civic Centre for people who live within the borough and most people with debt problems get referred there. If people have benefit problems i.e. they don't think they're getting what they should, there's a special programme on the computer system - all their incomings, family details etc can be run through the programme. Again one of the problems I had doing telephone-answering - a lot of people want a quick simple answer in a couple of minutes on the phone. Most interviews face-to-face with an adviser take about an hour.

Consumer - buying things that are faulty, trying to get a refund/replacement, packet of breakfast cereal with a piece of glass in it. These problems happen very often and are all covered by the Sale of Goods 1979 - anything you buy must be 'as described, fit for the purpose' i.e. if it's a car it should go, if it's a television set it must have a picture, those kind of things. Cclothes must fit, if they're said to be washable then they shouldn't shrink the first time they're washed, all those type of issues.

i know a few people who always get their water bills paid by citizens advice - apparently you have a fund for paying off bills for people who get into a situation where they'll be cut off.

If this exists then I didn't know about it. AFAIK we have no such fund. What CAB do is try to negotiate with e.g. water, electricity, gas etc but I have no knowledge at all of any fund that exists where CAB actually pays people's bills. I think this is one of the things that people think CAB *can* do but in fact it's a fallacy. Like people who've been evicted from council housing - never done nowadays except for the most serious of reasons, and people seem to think that CAB can rehouse them after council eviction!!

One young guy phoned - he'd been thrown out of his parents' home in another area and said 'I want you guys to fix me up with a place'. Impossible! He didn't want to go to the homeless shelter, didn't want to apply to go on the list of the area he came from, so phoned CAB in our area! Another caller was talking about his girl-friend's sister who had been 'thrown out' of where she was living, and said 'I know that now she's 16 she's entitled to a flat'. Well, no, she isn't automatically *entitled*!

I'm glad I'm out of it, trying to achieve the impossible.

Aunty Margaret

crutches

hada phone call from the bank's solicitors today asking me to withdraw my application for a stop order because their clients have"reassessed the account and found that it is up to date and in fact over the payments due on the court order".
said i would contact court tomorrow.Obviously i'm pleased but a bit wary.any advice PLEASE.