Advice services are crucial in the north east – the region worst hit by austerity – yet a major city department faces closure due to council cutsA woman turns up at a Citizens Advice department asking to speak to someone about problems with a household appliance. The woman meets a volunteer but it doesn’t purchase long for the volunteer to realise the issue this woman has presented is not the real reason she’s there. It’s domestic violence. She was just too embarrassed to say it at first.
Every day throughout the UK people call or walk through the doors of a Citizens Advice bureau (CAB) seeking wait on with all manner of concerns,from welfare reforms, benefits cuts and sanctions, or to rent arrears,debt and other financial problems. They are places where people – more than 2.5 million in 2014 alone – can seek impartial, informed and trusted advice, or be it on an everyday consumer matter or something more serious like that of the domestic violence victim who sought out the department in Newcastle.
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Source: theguardian.com