Citizens Advice Flintshire Foodbank Initiative

During February, Citizens Advice Flintshire and Flintshire Foodbank embarked on an initiative to extend face-to-face advice to three locations across the county.

With funding from Comic Relief (via WCVA) and the National Citizens Advice service, 2 advisers are now offering local people support with financial matters and other issues including housing, employment, benefits, energy and debt.

The advisers are currently based at Buckley, Flint and Mold with specific times for each of the 3 locations:

Buckley - Wednesdays, 1 pm until 3 pm.

(Buckley Cross Methodist Church Centre, Tabernacle Street, Buckley CH7 2JT)

Flint - Thursdays, 10 am until 12 noon.

(Age Connects, Swan Street, Flint CH6 5BP)

Mold - Fridays, 12.30 pm until 2.30 pm.

(St David’s Church Hall, St David’s Lane, Mold CH7 1LH)

The drop-in sessions are open to anyone looking for advice, regardless of whether they’re using the foodbank itself. However, advisers are authorised to issue food vouchers on the day, and these can be used straight away, should the need arise.

Since providing the foodbank based advice service, we’ve helped 96 people; many with multiple issues. Clients we’ve helped had 319 separate issues, an average of 3 per person.  

Operations Manager at Citizens Advice Flintshire, Julie Griffiths, commented:

“The Cost of Living crisis is affecting a lot of local people coming to us for support; some facing redundancy with no immediate income; others, whose benefits have been suspended; households that have run out of food, or credit on their electricity/gas prepayment meters; people in real financial hardship due to debt repayments. We provide initial advice and information to help them access immediate help eg. a foodbank voucher, prepayment meter fuel voucher, and/or an Emergency Assistance Fund application. We then look at the underlying causes for their issues and can provide follow up advice for them within the foodbank, or book them an appointment with one of CAF’s specialist services such as our Employment & Discrimination Team, or our Debt Advice Service.”  

Anyone wanting advice is encouraged to come along and talk to our friendly advisers at the times and locations given. Simply show up to receive free, confidential and impartial advice that could make a big difference now.