Here's just one tiny snapshot of day in the life of a Citizens Advice in 2025

Today I’ve been the Duty Manager for our drop in Advice Service and if ever there was a day of desperation today has been that day.  

We’ve had a steady stream of people who needed our help today, including people coming to sit in our reception area because it is a ‘Warm Space’, a place where they can get in from the cold, have a warm drink, a cuppa soup and a biscuit or two. They sit with us from the doors opening to the doors closing, a brief relief from the cold of living homeless or sitting in a home so cold and damp it chills the bones.

A woman and her partner, living in a tent not far from our building, her possessions (including their food) stolen by someone equally desperate.  Her ask?  I bet you think she wanted money, right?  No.  Her ask was simple: could she have a banana from our fruit bowl, a cup of warm soup and a place to sit before returning to a dark, damp tent on a piece of wasteland?  It’s been raining today and only 6 degrees; the temperature is expected to drop to less than 3 degrees overnight.

I asked her, “How do you stay positive in the midst of all of the things you’re dealing with?” Her reply, “It’s simple, I set myself three goals every day, something I can easily achieve so I know I’ve got something to get up for, otherwise I’d just give up, and God knows what would happen to me”. Her worries?  Not for herself, entirely for her partner. “He finds it harder than me, he doesn’t want to burden me with his worries cos he knows it’s hard enough for me, so he bottles it up, but I see it in his eyes, he’s struggling more than I am, he doesn’t find it easy to ask for help.”

Next, there’s the chap who needs a £1 from us.  He hasn’t come in asking for hundreds of pounds, he doesn’t want free things from us, he needs a £1 to add to the £4 he has in his pocket so he can put just a little money on his energy meter to get through the night.  He’s sat with us all day in our Warm Space since we opened our doors at 10 am in order to save on those energy costs, but we close at 5, and he must go home eventually.

We’ve also had a visit today from the Police and from the Ambulance Service. I won’t go into detail for fear of identifying the person who needed their help, but a significant mental health episode unfolded on a day when the statutory support services we often rely upon are closed.

Often on a weekend in particular, we're the only place to go, and yet more and more often all we have to offer is kindness, respect, dignity and a 999 call in the hope they get what they need from emergency services, but invariably they don’t. The emergency services are powerless to compel them to attend the hospital, the Police standing by helpless to do much, knowing they’ll be out again to the same person in an hour or two.

In amongst this, there are the people who need our help to register a name for their new baby, someone who wants to open a bank account, another with problem rent arrears and a family with a fuel bill they’ll never be able to afford to pay despite working full time.

This takes a toll on our advisers; none of this is easy. Sending someone out of the Warm Space on an evening knowing they are going to a dark and damp tent, seeing someone you've supported throughout a difficult mental health episode walk away without medical intervention, knowing they are considering taking their life, these things are not easy and so on a day like today in amongst supporting our clients there's a need to care for our staff and volunteers too.

I’d love to tell you today has been an exceptional day, but there's nothing exceptional about today; every day is like this. So, when I hear people talking about people taking stuff for free at the expense of working families, it causes my heart to sink because so often it’s working families we are helping and they aren't taking stuff for free, they aren't receiving thousands in welfare payments their not entitled to - it's just not true. It’s people facing exceptional hardship, it’s rarely if ever the feckless, the undeserving, the scroungers that I hear so much about in our media and in our public conversation. I'm here to tell you it's ordinary people like me, like you and it includes your neighbours, your colleagues, and the people who stand with you at the school gates every morning.

Life is hard, maybe you're not as close to it as I am so I hope you'll take my word for it. Let's not make it harder by 'othering' those who have fallen on hard times.