Article by Derek Mitchell, CAS CEO. First published in The Herald on 28 December 2025.

A few weeks ago the actress Cheryl Fergison made headlines as she spoke about her time since leaving her high-profile job in Eastenders.

In the 12 years since playing Heather Trott, her acting career had stalled. She spoke openly about her challenges since, including with her health, debt and depression. She also discussed her experiences that led her use a foodbank for the first time.

The answer is quite simple. It’s called life. When you’ve worked for the Citizens Advice network for a while you come to understand this. We see it again and again coming through our doors.

You can be rolling along fine – great job, good house, nice car, holidays abroad. Then maybe you get sick. Or someone you love gets sick. Or you suddenly lose your job. Maybe there’s a pandemic. Or just a streak of bad luck. A bad investment, your car breaks down, the house gets flooded, you fall victim to a scam or develop a gambling addiction.  

Things happen. Life isn’t simple, or predictable. You can try to avoid these calamities, but they do happen. And if you talk to the people who have experienced them, you’ll find they have one thing in common: like you – they never thought it could happen to them.  

And unfortunately, many of our systems are broken and the support needed to help people during difficult periods in their lives, simply isn’t there.

by Erica Young, CAS social Justice team. This article was first published in The Herald on 21 December 2024.

Momentum is building toward the consignment to history of a policy that is reminiscent of the Britain we saw in A Christmas Carol, not the compassionate modern country we need today.  

Known as the 'two-child limit', the policy restricts access to low income based social security (Universal Credit) to the first two children in a household.

The Scottish Government may look to Scottish Child Payment (SCP), a payment provided to each child in a household in receipt of Universal Credit. SCP is soon to become legally disentangled from the reserved system, meaning that mitigating the limit could be achieved by increasing the level of SCP for third and additional children.

Removing the two-child limit has been found to be the most cost-effective available child poverty reduction policy. Ending it could immediately lift 15,000 children out of poverty in Scotland, providing relief to larger families disproportionately living in relative and absolute poverty.  

Since insufficient household income is the immediate driver of child poverty, a cash first approach is foundational, maintaining agency and dignity, while helping to transcend the stigma associated with assessing support. The parents our network support face barriers to improving their lives through work, higher living costs and various irrational features of the social security system such as the five week wait for an initial payment.  

Demand for advice about crisis support from local CABs is alarmingly high. Far too many face hunger and hardship. In the month from October to November this year, we provided 15% more advice about accessing emergency cash grants, while the volume of advice provided about foodbanks has increased by more than a fifth (23%) in the last year. All symptoms of the broader failure of social security policy to meet essential needs and strategically invest in people.

Article by CAS CEO Derek Mitchell, first published in The Herald on 23 November 2024.

I like to think I’m a fairly well-balanced person. Usually I can see the bright side of life and very little fazes me. However, I’m going to write now about something that makes me really angry.

The Citizens Advice network runs an income maximisation model of advice. That means when someone comes to us with any kind of financial problem, we first check to see if they’re missing out on anything they’re due. Of course, not everyone is, but it’s astonishing how many are.  

Last year in Scotland we unlocked a total of £158 million for people. The average amount was just over £3,700. Just imagine what that means to someone who was in crisis. And of course it gets spent in local shops and businesses, which helps boost the local economy – wages, jobs.  

So that’s the good news. Proper advice can help people get what they’re entitled to. But the snag is it only works when people come forward and seek the help. More must be done to encourage people do that.  

A lot can be achieved with a bit of cross-agency effort. Here’s a good example. Last year the Scottish Government set up a scheme that would provide financial help in the form of pre-loaded shopping vouchers to low-income households. They decided to partner with us in the CAB, and so their scheme was linked to our income maximisation advice.  

The pilot ran across 11 Scottish CABs from June-November. In total, 10,403 cards and grants were issued to 3,154 people, at the value of £260,075. On average these people were £1,259 better off with an overall gain of £1.9m. The government is now working with us on another scheme, Routes out of Crisis.

Article by Erica Young from the CAS Social Justice team, first published in The Herald on 16 November 2024.

Two years ago, the Scottish Government launched the Adult Disability Payment (ADP), which aims to support people with the extra costs of living with a health condition in accordance with the principles of dignity, fairness and respect. To monitor its performance, an Independent Review of ADP was convened, which has now published its interim report.

People are asked if they can, for example, prepare a meal, safely, repeatedly, and to an “acceptable” standard, but our experience is that individuals often find this hard to explain with reference to their own lives. It can also be difficult for people to grasp how the criteria apply to mental health needs.  

Inconsistency and unpredictability in decision-making was a key theme in our evidence to the review, and we’re pleased to see this reflected in its findings.

The challenge ahead is illustrated by the cases of people that the CAB network supports who are living with eating disorders. The current ADP criteria are not able to account for the impact that such a condition has on a person’s experience of social engagement, washing, dressing, and cognitive function.  

Then take for example the case of James (not his real name), who experienced trauma as a looked after child. He now lives with PTSD, anxiety, depression and insomnia. He told his CAB that he felt overwhelmed by the application process and needed help to complete it fully and accurately.

Article by Jonathan Watt on the closure of the CAS Armed Services Advice Project. First published in The Herald on 09 November 2024.

As an aged veteran with 27 years in uniform, last weekend I took to Princes Street in Edinburgh to stand on the pavement along with many other volunteers selling poppies for a worthy cause. Tomorrow is of course Remembrance Sunday, a national opportunity to remember the service and sacrifice of all those who have defended our freedoms and protected our way of life.  

It was for these reasons that the Armed Services Advice Project (ASAP) was created in 2010, to fill that gap in the sort of specialist advice required by the AFC. ASAP was unique in bringing together the Citizens Advice network with six of the leading UK Armed Forces charities. Through the provision of dedicated information, advice and support, it has helped an average of 2,200 beneficiaries a year and has generated more than £20 million in financial gains, which is really transforming the lives of those recipients.  

Some of the cases were relatively simple – like getting housing or help with a job application. Others were deeply distressing, like disabled veterans living in poverty and serious mental health problem. It was an honour to be part in providing solutions to every one we helped.  

However, just a few weeks ago, ASAP closed its doors and because its funding was withdrawn. This is unfortunate as it was one of the few services in Scotland that was able to provide a bespoke service, irrespective of the complex needs of its clients and of the balance of advice required between state and charity support; a one-stop-shop which eased anxiety and made the client journey all the easier. It was able to offer information, advice and casework support to put together a multi-agency support package for the individual using their preferred communication channel – often a person in a CAB rather than a digital helpline and being signposted on.

Article by Stephanie Millar of the CAS social justice team, first published in The Herald on 05 October 2024.

The enduring cost of living crisis and recent energy price rises means every pound matters. Most of us will have looked to try to reduce our costs and perhaps tried to increase our incomes. Understanding our entitlement to social security and making sure we are in receipt of everything we are entitled to is a key way to do this. 

The Scottish Government publishes take-up figures for eight of the benefits it currently has responsibility for. There are variations from a massive 95% for Scottish Child Payment (under 6 years old) to only 15% for the Job Start Payment. Benefits that are based on individual circumstances such as for the extra costs of being disabled currently have no official estimates. However, the CAB network frequently sees people who are unaware of their entitlement or don’t feel their condition is serious enough to claim disability benefits.  

The Scottish Government is actively trying to improve benefit take-up and has a strategy to address the barriers to claiming, developed with the involvement of benefit claimants themselves.  

Having a system that is person-centred, user friendly and accessible is vital to ensuring we receive our entitlement. 

Article by Myles Fitt, head of the CAS Financial Health team, first published in The Herald on 21 September 2024.

Citizens Advice not only provides advice through its network of CABs, but it also works to influence decision-makers to secure policy changes. This ensures that the issues facing clients, and the wider public are being addressed in a bid to protect them from happening in the future. 

When dealing with arrestment orders, banks point to it being too onerous and challenging to work out what income is deemed earnings and what is deemed benefits, while also referring to a legal view that benefit income loses its protected status when it lands in a bank account.  

This situation is neither fair nor acceptable. Too many people are still financially struggling from the ill wind of the pandemic and cost of living crisis, and we know from our own data that increasing number of clients experiencing debt are also in receipt of social security.  

Citizens Advice Scotland believes that a solution can and must be found to prevent the arrestment of benefit payments. Banks surely have the ability in this digital and AI age to figure out what is and what isn’t benefit income, while local authorities have the insight to know when someone is on benefits and therefore should not be subject to a bank arrestment. This should not be hard, especially for those whose income is solely benefit. We recognise that the issue of separating mixed earnings and benefit income is more challenging, but with the right technology and the correct mindset, a solution can be found. 

Article by Erica Young from the CAS social justice team, first published in The Herald on 03 August 2024.

The new Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has stated powerfully that:

...tackling child poverty is at the heart of breaking down barriers to opportunity and improving the life chances for every child. For too many children, living in poverty leaves them not ready to learn and robbed of opportunity.

At CAS our data is beginning to reveal the impact. The proportion of households with children receiving food insecurity advice decreased by 10% over February to March in the financial year 2023-2024.  In the same period the previous year it increased by 29%.

This shift coincides with the expansion of Scottish Child Payment. It is soon to become legally independent of UK-delivered social security. This provides an invaluable opportunity to ensure that it truly targets need, catching people not currently able to access it, including those in receipt of Maternity Allowance, some students, and those with no recourse to public funds. There is an opportunity to prevent an abrupt loss of support (so called “cliff-edges”) by considering a gradual reduction in payment levels as people earn more and children transition to adulthood.

Of course, SCP is only part of the journey towards eradicating child poverty. Accessing SCP could be the “front door” parents can open to access complete early years support for families, built from Social Security Scotland’s Local Area Delivery service.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies concluded that this approach, formerly implemented via the Sure Start programme, reduced the need for support for many children initially recorded as having a special need, and was particularly effective for children from low-income backgrounds. The programme was managed by a partnership of health, education, social services and the voluntary sector.

As Social Justice spokesperson for Citizens Advice Scotland, I look at the issues that are coming through the doors of CABs and work out what changes we need in public policy.

There’s no doubt we need significant change. Bold, radical policies that will deliver systems change. The pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis will cast long shadows. People have had their financial resilience wiped out and, in many cases, forced into debt because the cost of essentials has been so high.

But the genesis of these issues stretches back over decades for households on the lowest incomes. Welfare reform and austerity have not just forced people to endure destitution and desperation, but robbed people of their dignity as they endeavour to stay afloat.

We need a reset. Big bold ideas, like a minimum income guarantee, or a social tariff for energy costs, anchored in our shared values of justice and compassion. Alongside this we need to do the things that are working better. New ideas are necessary, but so too is effective delivery.

A new report from Policy in Practice estimates almost £23 billion in social security payments and cheaper deals are unclaimed across the UK by around 8 million people. The report doesn’t give a figure for Scotland but highlights areas where people may be missing out – like 179,000 eligible people in Scotland not claiming Council Tax Reduction.

This report makes me reflect on two things – first, delivery can be hard. Giving people a right to social security does not guarantee they will receive it. All of the reasons why people don’t claim payments they are entitled to stigma and shame remains perhaps the hardest barrier to remove.

An insidious narrative, often propped up by politicians and journalist alike, prevails. It’s the flipside of the ‘American Dream’: that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough. And so, if people are architects of their own success, they must orchestrate their own failure. Shirkers. Scroungers. The rhetoric rings loud and clear. Is it any wonder people don't want to enter a system that writes them off before they have got started?

The second thing is the transformative potential of what full take up could do. What would a UK economy look like if 8 million people had their spending power increased by £23 billion pounds? How many people would sleep and eat better? How much stress could be relieved on household finances, public services, and people themselves?

Last year the Citizens Advice Network unlocked £142 million for people, with people on average £3,700 better off. CABs are providing an essential service, while facing increasing demand, often from people in crisis with complex circumstances. Many people get access to payments they are entitled to, sometimes backdated years and see their lives transformed. Unlocking these missing billions matters.

Yet we must remember the growing number of people still don’t have enough after getting everything they are entitled to. Like a flashing light on a dashboard, this must cause us to stop. Reset the system.

That’s why we need a twin track approach. Both the big, bold radical ideas that will make a difference long term, but ensuring those ideas are delivered properly, so people can access their rights and all they are entitled to.