Personal Independence Payment Clinic

I am a firm believer in using one’s privilege and platform to give back to their community in a meaningful way. Having worked with WarwickLinCon their Strategic Social Justice Clinic, as well as being a volunteer with Citizens’ Advice for many months, I was excited to take this further step into community service and work with Coventry Independent Advice Service (CIAS) over the summer, a brilliant charity offering free advice for those in need within the area.

While my previous volunteering roles have given me a good sense of the systemic challenges facing vulnerable individuals, I was excited to have a more frontline role in the advice sector, my job in particular being to assist with CIAS’ ‘PIP Clinic’.This is a drop-in service held every Wednesday for people to come in and receive help filling in their Personal Independence Payment applications.

My main task was ensuring that clients of CIAS received any additional support they needed beyond benefits, for example, with applications for Council Tax Support/discounts, reductions in clients’ water bills, blue badges and charity grants, as well as signing clients up for the Priority Services Register. This involved handing a client a checklist in person for them to fill out, and ringing clients on the days I worked from home to assist them with applications over the phone if support could not be given in-person. While it was a challenge sometimes to communicate the relevant application processes to clients, particularly over the phone, it was always a rewarding feeling seeing and hearing clients’ relief at having a daunting bureaucratic process demystified and navigated on their behalf. It also gave me an idea of some of the things the council had to improve, which CIAS took note of - for example, the wording of the online applications were rather confusing, and could easily deter many vulnerable individuals from applying.

Beyond this, I also had the invaluable opportunity to see clients on my own through appointments, which I could book myself using CIAS’Advice Pro online system. Not only did this provide real-world experience in a professional advisory setting, it more importantly gave me the opportunity to try my best to get those applying for PIP the help they deserved. This involved asking the right questions and eliciting information from clients that they might not think is relevant themselves; sometimes it is easy for people to dismiss their struggles if said struggles are a normalised part of their daily reality. In that way, appointments often felt like a collaborative process to ensure the client’s application really reflected their lived experience. Although it was hard for clients to go through this, again, the relief on their faces afterwards made everything worthwhile.

Overall, I learned many transferable skills working alongside the wonderful people at CIAS. Everyone was willing to help me grow and expand my knowledge, which makes CIAS an excellent place to work for anyone that wants to learn more about welfare benefits and the advice sector in general. I am grateful for the opportunity I was given to develop a better understanding of our welfare system while making a difference in the lives of Coventry's most vulnerable residents.