Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire
Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire run a local Citizens Advice service dedicated to serving the advice needs of RAF Brize Norton personnel and their families. The service, which was awarded £66,100 in February 2024, provides holistic advice to help navigate family breakdown, housing issues, money and debt issues.
Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire has been running advice surgeries at RAF Brize Norton for over 20 years and they have worked with the Station to develop a comprehensive advice and casework service that supports those individuals and their families that become vulnerable through hardship and crisis. The project will work closely with Station Welfare services to ensure that vulnerable families and individuals have access to the support they need. The service understands the unique challenges that serving personnel and their families face and aims to give people the knowledge and the confidence they need to find their way forward, whatever the problem.
Chief Officer of Citizens Advice West Oxfordshire, Teresa Archer said: “We have been providing advice and casework services to personnel at RAF Brize Norton and their families for 20 years, and we have seen much change over that time. We work with people experiencing financial difficulty, either through debt advice, maximising income, helping to access charitable grants or signposting to other services such as gambling support. We help people who are caring for a child or partner with disabilities or ill health, and we advise families going through the trauma of family breakdown. Housing, benefits, employment, discrimination and consumer issues are just some of the main topics our clients come to us for, and we advocate and campaign on issues and policies that have adverse effects on those we support.
“This funding has ensured that the largest RAF Base in the UK has continued access to good quality, holistic advice from an experienced caseworker that understands what it means to be part of the military family. We are very grateful to the Armed Forces Covenant Fund for this essential support, and to RAF Brize Norton for continuing to work closely with us and supporting this vital service for their personnel.”
Specialist RAF Brize Norton Caseworker, Julie Rogers, has over 20 years’ experience advising and supporting military personnel and their families. “As an adviser my role is to discuss the issues a client presents with and to make sure that the person is clear what options are available to them. In addition to the knowledge, I have accumulated due to working in this role for a long time, I have access to huge amounts of information and have supervisors and ‘second tier’ advice consultants to turn to if I am presented with an issue that is complicated or complex. As a caseworker, I can take action on my client’s behalf, if necessary, and if the client wants me to.”
The impact of the service on people’s lives is considerable as illustrated below:
“I have recently had a very significant personal issue that the Citizens Advice caseworker has helped me with. I do not say this lightly but with work schedule and family commitments I honestly did not know where to turn. I was extremely worried when I found myself at the RAF Brize Norton Citizens Advice outreach service. With the caseworker I found someone who not only showed great compassion and concern but someone who is evidently very skilful at her job.
Without her help I would most likely have had to pay for legal advice or more likely have had to try to work it out all by myself. Without her knowledge and dedication, I cannot imagine I would have had the success I had”. Current serving personnel.