What we do
The Cambridge Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) is an independent charitable organisation that helps people resolve their problems by providing information and advice.
The Citizens Advice Bureau aims |
The principles: |
| To provide the advice people need for the problems they face | Our service is open to anyone without favour |
| To improve the policies and practices that affect people’s lives. | Our service is free, confidential, impartial and independent |
| We aim to help people to solve their own problems |
What do we advise on?
We attempt to tackle almost any problem.
Our Information system is split into 14 key areas including ...
- Debt
- Employment
- Health & community care
- Housing
- Immigration
- Legal issues
- Relationships
- Welfare & benefits
We also offer specialist case-work advice on ...
- Money and Debt
- Welfare Rights and Benefits
- Mental Health Issues
Service delivery
Delivery is by a mix of volunteers and paid staff, totalling 146, currently. Volunteers outnumber the paid staff by a ratio of 6:1.
We are also lucky to have other local professional organisations which give us support, e.g solicitors who do regular sessions at Newmarket Road.
An office based drop-in service and appointments are held both at the main office and our outreaches. See "Find Advice".
(43% of clients come to our main office).
We deal with many enquiries over the phone and e-mail is becoming popular, with the use of standard enquiry forms that enable us to capture as much of the necessary information that we need from you, at the earliest point.
The above figures are taken from the
Cambridge
Bureau Statistics Report
for 2007/08.
History - a quick romp through the decades……
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We started with debt advice (incomes were drastically cut by call-up – families lost their key bread-winner).
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After the war, CABx worked with the Red Cross to help locate relatives.
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The legal Aid and Advice Act resulted in matrimonial and legal problems increasing in the 1950s.
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We became more involved in housing problems after the ‘1957 Rent Act’ was introduced.
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The 1970s brought large scale redundancies.
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Unemployment enquiries doubled in 1980s.
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Consumer related problems increased as a result of the formation of the Office of Fair Trading.
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The 1990s saw huge problems with changes to the benefits system – including the new Child Support scheme. Asylum seekers lost benefit entitlements and the Benefit Integrity Project was set up to detect fraud.
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House repossessions and changing employment patterns has meant that debt continued to be our largest area of advice for the next decade and unfortunately we are unlikely to see much change there for some time to come.
The Future
- What we would like to do -
- More Outreach work
- Increase access to more specialist legal advice
- Improve phone system/access
- Open our Advice Hub
- Launch the Active Citizens Hub for training and work placement initiatives
- More home visiting for those completely housebound