Research and Campaigns Volunteer – Northumberland Region

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At Citizens Advice Northumberland you will be welcomed into a team who are committed to working to make a real difference to the lives of the local community while being part of a national organisation. Volunteering at Citizens Advice Northumberland is interesting, sometimes challenging, but always rewarding. Volunteering with us can develop skills and experience for employability. If you are looking to change careers or find employment, we can provide you with a reference. Alternatively, you might want to keep your mind active, learn new skills, and meet like-minded people. Whatever your reasons for volunteering, you will find an interesting and worthwhile volunteer experience with us.

Please note, we can only support volunteering from within Northumberland, or very near area. Therefore, we are unable to accept volunteers from other regions.

Research and Campaigns Volunteer is a flexible role. You will train and volunteer from home. You will also attend regular team meetings, remotely. The hours are flexible hours to suit your availability. We pay agreed travel expenses to and from your home to your local office or training venues.

You will play an essential role in helping to affect change and create a fairer society. Citizens Advice holds a huge amount of insight and data about the problems our clients and their wider communities face. We can use this to help research issues further and to campaign to change policies and practices. Your role will be to work with our research and campaigns team to plan, promote and participate in research and campaigns activities.

Previous IT experience is essential due to the method of some of the training: e-learning, video calls, emails, online workshops and the IT use required for the role: as well as online research on our information system.

There is a Research and Campaigns training programme, which we ask you to work through. It is important that you have an understanding of the service so the learning is done via our national Citizens Advice learning platform, in our offices and attendance on some training events (virtual and face to face). You will have one to one support with training as needed from one of our Learning and Development team and as you progress, assistance from supervisors and always encouragement from all your colleagues.

Main duties and responsibilities may include:

  • Promoting and partaking in local and national research and campaign initiatives.
  • Providing support and guidance to advisers on research and campaigns work.
  • Helping advisers to identify suitable cases for research and campaigns work.
  • Monitoring trends in office enquiries, to identify issues for potential local or national research and campaigns work.
  • Collating good quality Evidence Forms and sharing good practice across the service.
  • Keeping up to date with local and national publications.
  • Network with others involved in research and campaigns work locally, regionally and nationally.
  • Reporting on research and campaigns issues at workers' meetings.
  • Acting as main contact on research and campaigns issues for trainees.
  • Maintaining electronic filing systems in accordance with Citizens Advice systems and procedures including scanning and attaching paperwork to case files.
  • Maintaining confidentiality about clients and their contact with Citizens Advice by following the Confidentiality Policy and adhering to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Skills and qualities needed:

  • An understanding of key current social issues, and their potential impact on our clients.
  • The ability to give feedback clearly and sensitively.
  • The ability to analyse complex information.
  • Monitor emails, use word processing programs, the intranet, web-based advice systems and carry out tabbed browsing.
  • Commitment to the Aims and Principles of the Citizens Advice service, including the service's Equality and Diversity Policies
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