CAB Volunteering

Citizens Advice would like to hear from all paralegals interested in becoming part-time volunteer advisors.

The CAB service is independent and provides free, confidential and impartial advice to everybody regardless of race, sex, disability sexuality or nationality.

It is the largest advice-giving network in the UK, with over 3,000 outlets and around 24,000 volunteers. The CAB help people deal with nearly six million problems every year, in bureaux, by phone and email, at outreach sessions in places such as GP surgeries and courts - even in people's homes.

As a paralegal you may already have quite a few of the skills necessary to make you a particularly effective advisor:

Training


Being an advisor means assisting people whose problems are real, worrying and pressing. A few examples of these, amongst many, are:

Advisors perform a professional role. Therefore the Citizens Advice runs a comprehensive, sophisticated free training course for all advisors before they get to meet clients.

Successful completion of the course will lead to a diploma awarded by Citizens Advice and widely recognised in the voluntary sector.

During the training course you will learn (or refresh) many important skills, including the arts of advising, of properly listening and of effective questioning so as to ensure that you get the full story.

The length of the training course depends very much on the skills you already have, and the amount of time that you can commit to the training.

You will also benefit from having a mentor who will work with you during your training.

Experience


There are few roles that offer as much hands-on advisory experience as being an advisor at Citizens Advice. This may be particularly useful if your paralegal duties are limited in scope, e.g. perhaps you only do paper-based work.

Being a Citizens Advice part-time volunteer advisor will give you a whole swathe of new skills and experience.

Next Steps


For more information, then please click here to visit the Citizens Advice web-site.

If you wish to discuss applying, then please contact the Citizens Advice National Volunteer Recruitment Line: 08451 264 264

We welcome your ideas, views or comments on this project and any others you think that we should consider. Please email us at office@the iop.org (note break in address to impede spammers)


 

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