I for one didn't realise that our council gave the CAB so much money and I think it is overpaid for the service it provides.
In the past I have tried many times to get help and advice from the CAB for my mother-in-law, who is housebound. In my exp
erience, as with many other writers to Your say, the CAB is as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
The CAB wouldn't visit her at home and told me to come in and discuss her queries. You sit there for an hour, to be fobbed off with an appointment for a week later.
You then see an inexperienced volunteer who has to keep leaving the room to check things out and then tells me that my mother-in-law doesn't qualify for anything.
A year later she applied for benefits with the help of Age Concern and was told that she should have applied years ago. She had lost out on a potential £3,000 a year and we couldn't do anything about it.
If she had seen an experienced adviser I think it would have been different. The CAB should train its volunteers before letting them loose to give potentially inaccurate information to the public.
For the amount of money the CAB gets to run its service it should have no excuses for not doing this.
We should all ask why on earth Sylvia Valentine should be moaning about the funding our council gives, and also why the council has actually increased the grant to the CAB over the next few years, and not cut it, as it has to everyone else.
J. Shaw
The full article contains 325 words and appears in Evening Courier newspaper.
