Providing free advice to Perth and Kinross residents

 

 

About Us

 

Who Are We?

Perth CAB is an advice agency providing a wide range of free services. Most of our staff are unpaid volunteers who have completed a comprehensive training course.

We have approximately 60 volunteer staff and 10 paid members of staff. New volunteers are recruited twice a year — all that is required is some spare time and a commitment to the Bureau’s aims and principles. Our volunteers may be retired, doing part time paid work, lone parents, students, unemployed or on benefit. Their backgrounds are as varied as the people who use Bureau services.

Perth CAB is totally independent of any other organisation. Funding comes from various sources including Perth & Kinross Council, the Scottish Government and Citizens Advice Scotland but the bureau is autonomous, a registered charity managed by a Board of Directors. We are members of Citizens Advice Scotland which is the largest independent advice network in Scotland.

Aims & Principles

Our aims are namely:

  • 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, and

  • To exercise a responsible influence on the development of social policies and services,
    both locally and nationally.

To achieve these aims we work to the following principles:

Free
 We offer a completely free service to all our clients.
Confidential
 Clients’ details are not disclosed to anyone.
Impartial
 Workers don’t make judgements about clients.
Independent
 No outside agency influences the service offered including funders.
Accessible
 We aim to make the service available to all.
Effective
 We aim to meet the clients’ needs.
Accountable
 Open and democratic, responsible to the local community.
Client’s right to decide
 We offer advice, the client makes the decision.
Voluntary
 The service is mainly provided by unpaid staff from the community.
Empowerment
 To help clients help themselves.
Information retrieval
 Using client experience to influence change.
Generalist
 Advice on any related subject.

 

What We Do

Listen fully to all our clients. Give general advice and up to date information, explain clients’ rights, fill in forms, calculate benefit entitlement, explore the clients’ options and negotiate on their behalf if necessary. If we are not fully able to help we can often refer the client to a more suitable agency.

We offer specialist advice about debt, benefit and employment tribunals, housing and social policy work, that is using clients’ experiences to bring changes to legislation or policy that is unfair or having an effect that was not the intention of legislators or policy-makers.

 

Registered Charity No:SC003259

Company Limited by Guarantee:153915