The last year has seen a major change in the provision of training from Citizens Advice with resources being targeted to the training of new advisers and bureaux largely having to meet the training needs of existing advisers and other staff themselves.
HECA pre-empted this change in training provision by coordinating regular training events with Harrow CAB to meet some of our joint training needs locally. These events have been well attended and are a cost effective way of providing good quality training for the staff of HECA.
HECA are also involved in a London Training Project which aims to provide training for participating CABx for the payment of an annual training levy.
Other sources of training that have been accessed during the year are local solicitors, LB Hillingdon Adult education programme; and also the Millennium Volunteer project.
HECA has also started running a programme of local courses on "form filling" to enable non-advisers to assist clients to complete forms.
“With the commencement of form filling by admin staff, we can now provide a back up service to the advisers freeing them to see more clients and deal with more complex problems. At the same time making it an interesting addition to our work, giving us a greater understanding of the benefits system.”
Hayes CAB Admin Staff
These courses are now taken by new trainee advisers as part of their overall adviser training programme.
Training of advisers is of paramount importance in order for HECA to meet the needs of our clients and the new Citizens Advice training programme leads to an award of the Certificate in General Advice Work.
This training programme requires the trainee to work though training packs, observe interviews, attend a 6 day course at our London Region office, attend courses on the main subject areas (debt, benefits, housing and employment), complete 4 Records of Learning and to collate evidence of competence in a variety of areas from their work with clients.
The process takes between 4-6 months for the initial period before advisers can interview clients on their own and a further 4–6 months to gather the evidence needed for the award of the certificate.
It involves a great input of resources with local training tutorials, regular learning reviews, supervised interviews and ongoing support. However, this leads to a well trained, competent and confident adviser able to cope with anything that a client may enquire about.
HECA therefore has to be confident of the commitment of potential volunteer advisers due to the time and labour intensive nature of the Certificate training programme.