Volunteer

Volunteering with us during coronavirus

In response to the coronavirus outbreak we’ve closed our offices to the public and changed the way our services work. Our staff and volunteers now work at home and help people by phone and email only.

We’re now taking applications for new volunteers but recruiting, training and your initial period of volunteering will involve working at home rather than in our offices. You’ll be supported by a team of managers and work alongside other volunteers, but this is a different experience to volunteering under normal circumstances.

If we take you on we’ll discuss this fully but before applying you might want to consider that:

• you’ll need a quiet, confidential space you can use at home
• you’ll need to be comfortable with IT and have a secure computer you can use
• you might find it more stressful to work at home because you won’t get face-to-face support and there won’t be separation between your home life and your role with us.

If you’re not sure that volunteering at home is right for you we can put you in touch with one of our existing volunteers so you can discuss their experience. If you’re not sure you have the right equipment we can discuss providing this, but we only have a limited budget for laptops and this might not be possible.

About volunteering with us

Around 22,000 people volunteer for Citizens Advice nationally. Becoming a volunteer can be personally rewarding and can help you make a difference to your community.

We’re looking for people who can make a regular commitment to volunteering, have good written and verbal communication skills and a desire to help others. We provide comprehensive training and support, but applicants need to be open-minded, non-judgemental, comfortable using or learning computer systems and must be able to work effectively as part of a team.

Our typical volunteer roles are:

• adviser
• telephone assessor
• receptionist
• form filler

If you’re not sure whether working directly with the public is for you or if you have other skills and experience that you think we might benefit from, we welcome applications from people with an interest in:

• administration
• volunteer training and support
• campaigning
• fundraising
• digital media, marketing and promotion.

We’re happy to discuss combining any of these activities with our other roles or creating a freestanding role for applicants who can demonstrate the right expertise.

If you’re a qualified adviser and are interested in volunteering with us you can email us directly to discuss joining our volunteer teams in Battersea Library or Roehampton.

Time and commitment

For our telephone assessor role we require up to 2 days per week for 12 months. Our other roles require a commitment of 1-2 days per week for 12 months. We recruit throughout the year to our telephone assessor role and as required for our other roles.

We know that volunteering with us is a significant commitment. We’re happy to discuss being flexible if you have less time but think you can still support our services or make a difference to our clients.

How to apply

To apply you can complete our expression of interest form below. You can also email us at volunteering@cawandsworth.org if you have any questions before you apply. We aim to get back to you within 2 weeks but it usually takes less time than this.