Working smarter, not harder.

The biggest challenge for CA TNMWD, is coping with ever-increasing demand for our services which, sadly but inevitably results in unmet demand.

People’s problems are increasingly complex, taking longer to resolve. We’ve a lot of useful information on our website, (https:www.citizensadvicetnmwd.org.uk) to help people, but acknowledge not everyone is computer savvy or has internet access. We’re also seeing significant increases in numbers of people calling in for drop-in sessions. We’re analysing the reasons behind this. The results of that analysis will direct us to finding solutions, but so much depends on having more people on the ground, trained and able to help.

Our ongoing recruitment campaign aims to increase our volunteer numbers because the more people on the team, the more people we can help. We’ve restructured our volunteer training so new volunteers can work with clients sooner than previously which enhances their satisfaction with the volunteering experience. We’ve investigated ways technical advances can help us work more efficiently and we’ve streamlined our documentation all without diminishing our efficiency and effectiveness.

However, one new initiative is having significant results, impacting on our ability to help more people, and empowering our volunteers, making them feel more involved with how we structure the help available.

By introducing use of the shifts app, our volunteers have been able to revise their way of working. They can see for themselves the peak times for calls to AdviceLine – our free, local telephone service (0800 27 87 999). They can put themselves forward to cover calls during those times and re-organise other work like catching up on emails so that it sits around the priority of responding to calls and helping more people. This is having very positive effects.  We know that this simple move to maximise availability of help to clients at peak times helps us help more people; equally, it’s helped our volunteers to feel more involved with the way we organise our operations and seeing the impact on numbers of people we help, gives an enhanced sense of satisfaction.

The question immediately springing to mind of course, is the impact our having even more trained volunteers would have on our ability to reduce levels of unmet demand.

Our volunteers are all ages, have widely differing work and life experiences. We don’t seek previous professional experience, though sometimes that’s useful, but we provide the same training, mentoring and support to everyone. We offer opportunities to train as assessors, generalist advisers, form fillers, specific involvement with a particular team – e.g. debt or energy.

We welcome people prepared to give maybe one day a week joining our team, develop existing skills, learn new ones and make new friends. There is more information on our website, or you can email [email protected]

Our Impact Reports for 2025-26 will be published soon, detailing the difference we make to peoples’ lives. You can be part of that difference going forward!