Training to be a CAB volunteer has just become more flexible!

PRESS RELEASE

A revolutionary new way of training volunteers is about to be piloted in the Highlands and Islands by the Citizens Advice Bureau service – one that will allow local people to acquire the skills needed when and where they want.

Getting volunteers can be hard work anywhere,” says Kaliani Lyle, chief executive of umbrella body Citizens Advice Scotland, “but doubly so in remoter areas, where long distances and erratic work patterns can demand an even bigger commitment from people.”

But Scotland’s frontline CAB service – 85 per cent of whose workers are volunteers – simply can’t do without them.  And not just willing pairs of hands.  It needs trained and confident workers able to advise the public on anything from debt and welfare benefits to consumer and employment rights.

To get them, it is launching a three-year pilot project to make volunteer-training in the Highlands and Islands more accessible, more flexible, and more fun!

“Our new ‘Blended Learning’ initiative will use new technology to deliver training via an interactive DVD,” explains Ms Lyle. “New volunteers will see a tutor deliver a training session on their computer screen alongside an accompanying Power-Point presentation - and all at a time and location that suits them.

“It will allow them to work through entertaining learning exercises at their own pace.  And they can go back and redo any bits of a module as often as they like until they are fully confident.”

The approach will also involve collaborative work with other trainees and ‘e-mentoring’ by experienced CAB advisers.

“The CAB service has always relied on trained volunteers,” says Ms Lyle, “but to attract and retain them we can no longer just assume that everyone can fit into a pre-set programme delivered in a bureau office.

“People with caring responsibilities, jobs, or who live in remote areas need a wider, more flexible range of options.  Our Blended Learning project aims to provide it.  It will let people gain the knowledge needed in their own time, when and where they want – at home, during their work lunch-hour, at the weekend, wherever…

“And it’s not just trainee volunteers who can find it difficult to plan and schedule in face-to-face training in one place – bureaux do themselves.  Blended Learning will push back the limits of what technology can do to enhance what’s already on offer.”

The new initiative has won start-up funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Partnership Programme.  If successful, the approach will be used by Citizens Advice Bureaux elsewhere in Scotland.

The CAB service has been buoyed by an Ipsos MORI poll last year.  97 per cent of clients surveyed praised the professionalism, competency and efficiency of its staff in helping people get fair treatment.

Notes for News Editors

1. Each CAB is an independent charity, run by a committee of local people, and responsible for raising its own funding.
2. 85 per cent of CAB workers are trained volunteers – if you’d like to help your local community for just a few hours each week, contact your local bureau manager, or volunteer through the CAS website – www.cas.org.uk
3. The first bureaux in Scotland were established in 1939 as a wartime information service.  There are now 76 CAB offices across Scotland, which operate from over 200 service points, and which form the country’s largest independent advice network.
4. CAB advice services aim to be freely available and accessible to everyone in the community.
5. Consumer debt is now the single biggest issue that CABx deal with.  Last year, CABx in Scotland dealt with debt totalling over £211m.