Charitable activities

To improve access to our service for clients, and the monitoring and assessment of the service, our diagnostic system was continued. Client satisfaction, adviser satisfaction and quality of advice given were rated as high. We gave ongoing support for trainees recruited last year. We had no new recruits this year pending grant and premises decisions, as part of our risk management strategy. Our Law Students Project continued with eight students recruited and retained. We also continued with the Housing Clinic for clients to see specialist housing caseworkers and established a referral scheme at various outreach sites to help us to reach clients who might not otherwise access our service.

We increased the provision of our service to young people (age 16-24) by continuing our work with Kingston University students and our placement scheme with variety of local schools. We carried out presentations on CAB work to Students at Kingston College who do not have English as a first language and continued membership of the London wide Youth Access Board which works to improve advice services for young people.

In order to provide an efficient staff structure and support for staff we carried out a range of activities including a training programme for staff in house, a staff handbook of policies and procedures to support smooth running of the bureaux, a scheme to issue Child Care vouchers as part of our ‘Family Friendly’ policies. We also adopted a policy to carry out Criminal Records Bureau checks for all new staff, in accordance with legislation and devised and implemented Health and Safety policies for all staff on a rolling programme.

We engaged more in campaigning for change by offering support to advisers on this concept, with two staff dedicated to the completion of evidence forms and work was undertaken with local media. Our financial gains recording shows £216,000 for the financial year 2006-2007. This is money gained for the local economy and should be measured against our grant from the Local Authority of £262,000. We also started to record outcomes for clients so that we will be in a position to demonstrate the beneficial impact of our work in the local community. On a national basis, we continued campaigning for Access to Justice via the Alliance and other national bodies.

KCAB case examples:

Client is young single woman living alone in council rented accommodation. She has been diagnosed with serious mental health problems, she is dyslexic and experienced both abuse in childhood and in her marriage.

She receives full housing and council tax benefit, and is on long-term Incapacity Benefit, not having been well enough to work for over 2 years.

She had 12 creditors (10 of them were catalogue companies) and a total of about
£4000 of debt. (Average debt to each creditor approx £270). The debts were all with debt collection companies (and in several cases the debt had already been sold on several times). Her medical condition meant that she did not like going out, and spent a lot of her time on the internet and telephone ordering goods from mail order companies.

Client arrived for appt with a friend and two carrier bags full of unopened post. Financial Statement took two 1 hour meetings with client to complete. We supported her to make sure that she was in receipt of her correct entitlement of benefits, and to reduce expenditure where possible and to challenge the legality of some of the debts.

After 3 drafts of financial statement, it became obvious that the client had no option other than to file for bankruptcy. None of the creditors had filed a County Court Judgment (although there were many letters threatening this). Could not apply for Administration Order. Client said that she would more than likely be able to borrow the bankruptcy fee. This she did and after two further appointments with
a volunteer got her forms completed and filed. Hopefully this is the end of the story, with bankruptcy giving her a chance of a fresh start