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Filling the advice gap
• COUNCILLOR Catherine West made a timely call when she asked why it is taking so long for Islington Council to re-open the borough’s only Citizens Advice Bureau (Long wait for advice, November 16).
For more than 20 years Parents Against Injustice (PAIN) has been offering advice and guidance to parents and families who have suffered injustice, but in the last few months its Islington group has been overwhelmed by parents either seeking help to get their children back from care or to assist in gaining more contact with their children.
Some have also sought help in complaining about council services but quite often many just want help in filling out forms.
The problem has been exacerbated with the recent changes in legal aid funding which have meant that it is getting more and more difficult to find proper legal representation as the few firms that still offer legal aid services, especially those specialising in family law, get busier and busier. More people are left, therefore, to represent themselves in court and would find a local CAB office a useful source of advice and information.
The result of all this is that voluntary groups like PAIN have been left to fill the gap in giving advice to some of our most vulnerable sections of society. Our organisation is entirely funded by its volunteers and so can only offer a limited service. Islington Council must take its responsibility to the community seriously and fully fund a Citizens Advice Bureau sooner rather than later.
TREVOR JONES
Parents Against Injustice (PAIN)
Hanley Road, N4
• I find it astonishing that, however many times one briefs Councillor Catherine West about an issue, she chooses to ignore the information she is given so she can make cheap political points, as she and her colleague Councillor Phil Kelly did last week regarding Islington Citizens Advice Bureau.
As she knows, Islington CAB closed earlier this year after running up serious debts. No one outside the CAB, including the other members of Islington Advice Alliance (Islington Law Centre and Islington People’s Rights) and the council, was aware of this until the CAB was beyond any help.
Cllr West was briefed on this but still feels she needs to rant about this in the local press. I can only presume she didn’t feedback the background to this issue and the action the council was taking to her colleague Cllr Kelly, judging from his comments last week.
The council has been pro-active in working with the national CAB on the establishment of a new CAB in the borough, which we hope will happen next year.
In the meantime, we have been supporting the other agencies in the Advice Alliance to fill the gap left by CAB. People are receiving good-quality advice from these agencies, which need to be congratulated for stepping into the gap.
It is wrong and misleading for the councillors to say that residents are not able to access benefit advice services.
Islington, under the Lib Dem leadership, has an excellent record on welfare rights. You only have to look at our joint visiting team with the Department for Work and Pensions, which has delivered millions of pounds worth of benefits for residents. This is leadership, not cheap sniping from the sidelines based on misinformation and gossip.
Cllr TERRY STACY
Lib Dem joint deputy leader of Islington Council
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