Volunteer Advice Roles

Volunteer Advice Roles

Posted for Uttlesford Citizens Advice

Posted by Volunteer Essex

Register your interest

You will be redirected to the Volunteer Essex website to express your interest.

Do you have a friendly telephone manner and can tick any one of the following?

• You want to help people
  
• You want to keep your brain active and learn new skills
• You love meeting people and want to make new friends?
• You want to enhance your CV?

If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for local people to train as volunteer advisers - no experience necessary. You just need to be friendly, non-judgmental, willing to learn and be able to use a computer.

What will you do?

• complete an introduction to Citizens Advice and training for your role
• talk to clients over the phone, face to face, or online to explore the problems they need help with
• find information about clients’ problems and help them to understand their options
• support clients to take action to resolve their problems. This might include drafting or writing letters, making phone calls, or referring the client to another organisation
• write a summary of the clients’ problems and what action you’ve taken
• look out for problems that are common, or are unfair, and write a short report about the problem

Some examples of what you could do: 

• help a client with debts access the support they need 
• explore what benefits a client is entitled to and help them to complete a benefit application form.
• help a client who has problems with their landlord to understand their housing rights. 

 Working with us you will:

• make a real difference to people’s lives 
• learn about a range of issues such as benefits, debt, employment and housing.
• build on valuable skills such as communication, listening and problem solving, and increase your employability
• work with a range of different people, independently and in a team.
• have a positive impact in your community.

We welcome applications from all sections of the community

What skills do I need?

You don’t need specific qualifications or experience; Advisers receive full training and always have a supervisor available but you’ll need to:

• be friendly and approachable
• be non-judgmental and respect views, values and cultures that are different to your own
• have good listening skills
• have excellent verbal and written communication skills
• have good maths and IT skills
• be able to understand information and explain it to others
• be willing to learn about and follow the Citizens Advice aims, principles and policies, including confidentiality and data protection
• be willing to undertake training in your role