Our volunteer advisers help people to resolve their problems, whatever they are - such as money, relationship, housing or employment problems - by providing free, confidential, impartial and independent advice. Last year we helped over 4,000 people across the Stroud District resolve over 9,500 problems. Around half these people were experiencing money problems and were unable to access advice or help from anywhere else. 35% also reported having along-term disability or health problem often a mental health difficulties.

Our service relies on the efforts of a team of hugely dedicated and highly trained volunteer advisers, who give their time to support their own community. 

To ensure a high quality service to people who are often at their most vulnerable - such as a time of bereavement, redundancy, ill-health or marriage breakdown - we invest a lot of time and effort in training and supporting our volunteers: they undertake a long and challenging training programme and receive intensive supervision for several months after starting to work with us. The volunteer adviser role is often attractive to professionals who have taken early retirement and want to continue to give themselves a challenge and also to younger people, including students, who want to broaden their experience. So,inevitably, each year some older volunteers retire and younger ones move on to new careers, and so we need to recruit and train around 12 new volunteer advisers each year.

Although we are a  member of a national network of local Citizens Advice services, we are a local independent charity and receive no Government funding, relying instead on the support of our local community. So we're now asking local people and businesses to sponsor a volunteer adviser by contributing towards the cost of their training. Just £24 will cover one adviser's training and supervision for one week and a donation of £208 would support them to help others in their community for a month.