What is Research and Campaigns?
Here at Citizens Advice Portsmouth , we hold a huge amount of insight and data about the problems our clients and the wider community face.We can use this insight and data to do several things:
- To help us research issues further
- To influence decision makers to change policies and practices
- To campaign to get decision makers to change policies and practices
We want to be able to help everyone in our community not just those that we directly support and we can do this by collecting evidence from our clients on the issues that affect them adversely. One way we can do this is through capturing the ‘human’ side of the story, that is using our clients words to describe the impact an unfair or unjust policy has had on them or their family.
We directly contribute and support our colleagues at a national level by providing evidence from our client’s issues on subjects such as Debt, looking at the problems caused in using Buy Now Pay Later products that, for some, can cause financial hardship.
Our Current National campaigns include -
- Universal Credit – we want the benefit system to provide an adequate level of support, so people have enough to cover their basic living costs.
- Employment – we're asking the government to ensure that workers are treated fairly and safely during the coronavirus pandemic.
- Bailiff Reform – Citizens Advice is calling for the bailiff industry to be independently regulated.
You can read more about our National Campaign work here insert link to https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/our-work/our-campaigns/all-our-current-campaigns/.
Research and Campaigns work in Portsmouth
Local Foodbank Research project.
Using our local insight data we realized that some of the vouchers we issued to clients to help with food provision were not used, we approached our colleagues in other local offices for their local insight. We want to be able to understand the barriers our local community face when trying to access this resource
Further work will be undertaken on this topic and our report will be published here when completed.
If you have any comments or experience that you would like to contribute to this research, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the research and campaigns team on research@caportsmouth.org.uk or call on 02394 006600 and ask for Wendy Carlyle.
