Developing our people

Citizens Advice provides training and skills development for 27,200 people who work across the service. The majority of our workforce are trained volunteers.

During 2006/07 we spent £4,007,000 training and developing our volunteers and staff.

Citizens Advice runs over 2,000 training events each year. For bureau advisers, largely volunteers, our flexible approach to training helps them build skills and confidence at their own pace. Our training results in an accredited qualification and 32 per cent of CAB advisers who left us went on to paid employment.

During 2006/07, 2,726 new CAB advisers qualified to provide advice on the full range of issues our clients face, from dealing with mounting debts to unfair dismissal.

To enable a flexible training programme, Citizens Advice has developed a programme of e-learning and bite size learning courses including negotiation, discrimination and benefits and tax credits.

The following outlines performance against the objectives for 2006/07 as stated in the 2005/06 annual report:

During 2006/07 we have:

• trained 300 advice session supervisors to support advisers to identify and advise on employment discrimination on the grounds of age, religion and belief and sexual orientation

• developed an accredited course for caseworkers on all types of employment discrimination, in partnership with Wolverhampton University

• launched a range of new bite size training materials for bureaux including age discrimination, tax credits and skills for trustee board members

• developed a partnership with the Workers Educational Association (WEA) that provides funding for the delivery of in-bureaux training events.

During 2006/07 we were unable to:

• introduce a learning management system and new booking system for bureaux. Work was carried out to progress this, but our IT system lacked the capacity to take the process further. The process will continue during 2007/08.

Next year we will:

• add to the materials available to bureaux to deliver financial skills training

• introduce new materials to support advisers learning about consumer issues, immigration, money advice and employment

• develop our partnership with the WEA to include support for learners in bureaux

• develop on-line booking for all training events

• extend the range of training opportunities for managers and trustee board members and provide an electronic assessment tool to help them identify their training needs.

7,500: Responses received to our first public online survey into ATM charges.

16–25: The age range we hope to encourage to volunteer thanks to youth volunteering charity v.

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