Volunteering

The information on this page is intended to give you a general overview of what you can expect from volunteering with Sudbury Citizens Advice.

As a volunteer at your Local Citizens Advice (LCA), you will be joining a national service providing free and independent advice to over 5 million people a year. Although the Citizens Advice service is the world’s largest independent advice giving agency, its roots and strengths lie with the contributions of local volunteers in their local communities.

The majority of people involved in the Citizens Advice service give their time on a voluntary basis: Volunteer Advisers, Trustee Board Members, Administrators, Social Policy Coordinators and many more enable us to provide a service from 2,000 outlets. This represents a huge commitment from individuals and local communities to providing information and advice to the public.

The Aims of the Service are:
1. To ensure that individuals do not suffer through lack of knowledge of their rights and responsibilities or of the services available; or through an inability to express their needs effectively (i.e. to help individual clients manage problems)
and, of equal importance,
2. To exercise a responsible influence on the development of social policies and services, both locally and nationally.

Basic training:
This is designed for you to work at your own pace depending on the amount of time you would like to commit. This normally takes about 9 months, but really depends on the individual. There are four records of learning plus self assessment training packs.

We have a Guidance Tutor based in the office to provide support by meeting on a regular basis, to provide assistance and arrange the training. Much of the training is distance learning. A four day Citizens Advice training course, at Chelmsford or Cambridge has to be completed, however, this can be spread over 2/3 weeks to suit individual need.

Volunteer support is provided in a number of ways in the Citizens Advice service. All volunteers will have a member of staff to support and supervise them.
Citizens Advice aims to treat all volunteers fairly and consistently. We hope you will always feel able to share your ideas, views and any other concerns you have. We need to know when things are going well and if they go wrong.