Wrexham Citizen’s Advice celebrates its 60th birthday

Sixty is a very special birthday for anybody but even more so for Wrexham Citizen’s Advice who have spent the last 60 years providing life skills advice free of charge to Wrexham residents.

Speaking with Wrexham.com chairman Robert Williams explained how these journeys often have difficult beginnings, with people typically knocking on the door of Citizen’s Advice due to debt or landlord disputes.

Citizen’s Advice then helps these clients by ensuring they are tapping into the widest range of benefits and support on offer.

Over the course of 60 years a lot has changed and as people from all over the world have begun moving to Wrexham and now call it home, the team at Citizen’s Advice have found their job roles evolving to provide support for people who may have barriers with bureaucratic tasks such as filling in forms or completing assessments.

One particular highlight for Robert was a project which saw Citizen’s Advice receive funding to create a liaison between themselves and the Traveler Community, increasing their confidence and levels of literacy to help them integrate with more day to day services to benefit their lives.

The past two years also saw changes no one could have predicted, the Covid-19 pandemic meant the service had to cease face to face contact with clients who were already identified as vulnerable, but also lost some of their older volunteers who found online interaction difficult and needed to take extra shielding measures against Covid -19. To the point where even though this funding has ended, the engagement rates for clients in this demographic are high and increasing.

Looking to the future Robert pointed out that typically if you were still providing the same service after 60 years, then you wouldn’t think they’ve done enough to fix the problems. However, as he points out, the problems are ever changing, as a live example he mentions the cost of living crisis and the way they can work to advise people on reducing their energy bills and also work alongside local foodbanks to help those in need.

For the next 60 years, Robert hopes that the service will continue to be a conduit to help engage people into society and wants to remind everyone worrying about getting through this winter and into a new normal that the service is there.

You can find out how to get in touch with the CAB via https://wrexhamcitizensadvice.com/

You can register an interest to volunteer here https://wrexhamcitizensadvice.com/volunteer/