My Account
The Wellsford Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) plans to open a weekly clinic in Warkworth before the end of the year.
Chair Brian Wright told the annual meeting on September 11 that the decision to investigate the satellite clinic reflected the number of enquiries the office received from Warkworth.
He said three new volunteers were being trained and it was likely the four-hour clinics, once a week, would be held in the former Auckland Council offices in Baxter Street.
Wright reported on a busy and eventful year for the bureau.
Funding was a key issue when Auckland Council proposed withdrawing support for CABs across Auckland. The Wellsford office depended almost entirely on its annual council grant of around $40,000, which paid the salary of a part-time manager.
Wright said that while a concerted campaign saw the funding secured until June next year, it came with the caveat that future council funding would only be provided if central government contributed 50 per cent.
“Wellsford is in the particular position where it straddles two local authorities – Auckland and Kaipara, where we run a clinic at Mangawhai,” Wright said. “About 13 per cent of our clients last month were from Mangawhai, so I’m not sure how Auckland Council will feel about funding that part of our service.”
Wright said another challenge this year had been the lack of volunteers. Later in the meeting, Barbara Leslie raised the issue of CAB making a small contribution towards volunteers’ travel costs, as she thought the rising cost of petrol might be a barrier to volunteering. It was agreed the board would discuss this suggestion at its next meeting.
During the past 12 months, the bureau ran 133 clinics, offering CAB, Justice of the Peace and budgeting services, and responded to nearly 1000 enquiries, both over the phone or face-to-face. Enquiries ranged from legal and government issues to consumer, family and personal, and finance and benefit issues.
It partnered with Wellsford Loaves and Fishes to assist more than 200 families and CAB volunteers also assisted during the civil defence emergency at the start of the year, when the community centre served as a civil defence centre.
Since the appointment of Jingjing Yi as manager, the Wellsford bureau has played an important role in providing language support for migrants from Asian communities across NZ. Yi is a native Mandarin speaker, and former manager Janny Baker offers Indonesian and Hokkien support.
