Don’t close Glasgow Citizens’ Advice Bureaux (a thread)

A person is late to an appointment at the job centre. They had to get the bus because their local job centre was closed and the bus was late. That person is sanctioned.

No access to money to feed themselves, heat their home or top up their mobile.
They go to their local Citizens’ Advice Bureau because they’ve walked past a few times and have heard from friends that they helped them.

They find the doors shut. Their local Citizens’ Advice Bureau is closed.
They go to their local library (if they are open because a lot of places have been closed because of Coronavirus) to use a computer to find out their local CAB.

On looking, they find that their closest CAB is on the other side of the city. They now need to try and find money for a bus fare, even though they have none, or find a friend who might be able to take them there.

They manage to make the journey from one end of the city to the other by taking the bus because their friend couldn’t help. They get to the CAB. They find they are actually closed that day. Their funding was cut so they can’t afford to run a 5 day a week service.

The person can’t afford another bus fare to come back another day for drop in. They take the phone number & use credit they have left on their phone (or the last days of a phone contract that they paid for before they were sanctioned) to try phone the next day when they’re open.

They pay for another bus ride home (or multiple bus rides because the city transport is good for getting from the outskirts to the centre, but not really from one end of the city to the other) using up some of the last bits of their money. They are cold and hungry.

The next day comes, the CAB is open! They get through after 20 tries - the phone lines have been busy because the CAB are now trying to help 8 bureaux worth of clients with only three now in existence.

The person says they need urgent help to apply for hardship funds because they have no money to pay for food, heat their home or pay for their phone bill. They don’t know how they will survive.

They can’t get an appointment for three weeks because the CAB is so busy and on the drop in days, the queues are all the way down the street. The other two bureaux are the same. The emergency appointments are already taken. The CAB will phone if there’s a cancellation.

The person takes the appointment, because it’s better than nothing. Their phone cuts off - they have ran out of credit. The power card runs out, no way to charge their phone. They sit, isolated, no way to contact phone based advice agencies without going to library (if open).

No way to know if there is a cancellation at the CAB that they can’t actually afford to travel to anyway.

They resign themselves to waiting in a cold home with no food that night - to try and find someone in the morning to help them eat until they can access hardship funds.

This can’t be right. Having community advice services and adequately funding them saves lives and stops our most vulnerable people from being harmed.
We must protect them.
@GlasgowCC do better by your citizens.
@NicolaSturgeon if the council won’t fund CABx, then @scotgov must.

Sign the petition. Contact your local representatives and please let’s hope they actually give enough of a damn to care. https://www.change.org/p/glasgow-city-council-save-glasgow-s-citizens-advice-bureaux