Seeking support can often feel stigmatising and may even put people off seeking the help they need. To combat this, Citizens Advice North Staffs (CAB) has chosen to locate its new Citizens Hub – a multi-purpose drop-in centre, internet café, and retail shop, with wellbeing services to follow – inside The Potteries Centre.
Set to open at the end of September next to TJ Hughes and the Hanley Post Office, it marks the first initiative of its kind in the UK. “Our thinking is that being seen in a shopping centre is not remotely stigmatising because, let’s face it, we all go shopping. It feels a bit less daunting,” explains Craig Browne, CEO at Citizens Advice North Staffordshire.
Other community organisations are set to offer support from the new hub too, including Dougie Mac and Staffordshire Police. The internet café, meanwhile, aims to encourage digital inclusion. “A lot of our clients either don’t have the digital skills or the equipment to do things online. So when someone comes in and needs help with benefits, for example, we print out pages and pages of PIP forms, fill them in by hand, pass them to the client to sign, then we send them off. We felt it would be much more empowering if they could show clients how to do it themselves.”
There is surging demand for these services across North Staffs. “Over the two-and- a-half years that I’ve been with the charity, the number of people we either speak to has increased from 21,000 to just over 33,000, almost a 50% increase. Our funding has also fallen by 10%, so we are doing half as much more with 10% less.”
With services offered from the end of September, the Citizens Hub will feature three secure private interview rooms where people can access a face-to-face interview or video call, with a screen in each room so people can be supported remotely.
Next year, the plan is to redevelop the ground floor of the same unit, where CAB will host the Volunteer Centre of Excellence, which will provide training not only for its own volunteers but also other charities and community organisations, Browne confirms.
In addition, there will be a wellbeing space and flexible working area for CAB’s own staff and members of the public, he adds.
Out of the 230 CAB offices in the country, Browne says North Staffs is set to be the only one to offer such a comprehensive range of services under one roof.
“Where I’m hoping to go with this is that it becomes an exemplar for the rest of the network. I think it’s a way that we can take advice and support to people rather than them coming to us. Clearly, the more we do to collaborate with the rest of the community and voluntary sector in North Staffordshire, the better. But also I hope it becomes a financially sustainable model for the future, with the shop helping us to generate a bit of revenue to help support service delivery,” he says.
An “absolute explosion” in personal debt levels
In addition to benefits assessments, the new hub will have a specialist legal team who provide support for housing, asylum, immigration applications, and hate crime reporting. However, the largest area of growth remains what Browne describes as an “absolute explosion” in personal debt. Collective debt handled by the charity rose dramatically over a two-and-a-half-year window, driven by personal loans, the cost of living, council tax arrears, and gambling.
The level of collective debt that it’s been helping people with has risen from £30 million to £212 million, an increase of almost nine times in less than three years. Browne points out that the one growth area of the economy in Stoke is gaming and gambling. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think their clients are also our clients.”
