AdviceAtHomeWorcester

As a result of coronavirus, Citizens Advice Worcester has transitioned from face to face appointments to remote working so that we can continue to deliver our advice service via other channels including phone, email and web chat. With this funding, we have been able to purchase additional hardware and software technology for both existing and new volunteers, therefore building local office capacity to help more clients and continuing to adapt to new ways of working. This has enabled us to deal with more clients more efficiently, recruit and train more volunteers over the past six months, increase productivity and reduce the costs of delivering the services we provide to many of the most vulnerable clients in the city.

During the period January - June 2020, 1230 Worcester based clients were offered information and advice over the telephone. During the same period in 2021 a total of 1949 Worcester based clients were able to access our service via telephone, an increase of 719 clients or +58% versus the same period last year. Having developed the routes through which clients can access our service, particularly through text and ringback, we saw a 19% increase in the number of clients that we called back between January and June 2021 versus July - December 2020, equating to 315 more clients supported with information and advice during that period.

Therefore more clients were able to access our information and advice service than would have been able to had we not had this grant to help fund the purchase of the appropriate telephony hardware and software needed by our volunteers.