Money Advice Trainee Caseworker in Exeter

Do you care passionately about making sure people get the advice they need to find a way forward? Are you motivated by tackling injustice and influencing social policy change? Whether you’re looking to take the next step in your career, or you’re already an experienced Citizens Advice adviser seeking a fresh challenge in a new part of the country, this could be the perfect opportunity for you. At Citizens Advice Exeter, you’ll join a supportive, forward-thinking team who are committed to empowering local people, driving positive change, and working together to create a fairer society. If you’re someone who thrives on helping others, enjoys problem-solving and wants to make a genuine impact every day, we’d love to hear from you.

What we’re looking for:

• You will be passionate about making a difference to people’s lives by providing holistic, person centred support around debt, budgeting and financial wellbeing.
• Ideally, you will have experience of advice-giving, but this is not essential, as full training will be given and we’d be delighted to help you develop into the role.
• You’ll enjoy working with a diverse range of people and bring an openminded, approachable and non-judgmental attitude.
• Empathy, compassion, clear thinking and confident problem solving will be central to how you support clients through sometimes complex financial situations.
• In this role, you’ll deliver high quality money, debt and budgeting advice within a quality assured framework, meeting FCA and AQS standards.
• You’ll help clients understand their debt options, maximise income through benefits and grants, prepare accurate financial statements and work collaboratively with creditors and other agencies.
• You’ll manage a busy caseload, keep detailed case records, identify urgent issues quickly, and support clients with related matters such as housing and welfare benefits.
• You may also negotiate with creditors and prepare or present cases including DRO, Breathing Space and bankruptcy applications.
• Alongside this, you’ll offer guidance to trainees and less experienced colleagues.
• The role is hybrid, with a mix of in person and telephone appointments, outreach work and working from home by arrangement.

Person specification:

• Experience in a customer facing role.
• A positive approach to quality of advice audit (including peer review and external audit) and a commitment to constructive feedback as part of the quality assurance and learning process (as a recipient and as a supervisor).
• The ability to sift through large amounts of information and gather essential details during a client interview.
• Excellent negotiation skills with experience of conducting negotiations with a range of agencies and creditors.
• Proven ability to plan and prioritise your workload, meet deadlines and work calmly and with focus within a busy and fast paced environment.
• Experience of using a casework recording and quality assurance system (or equivalent) and IT platforms.
• Experience of providing effective guidance and support to peers and junior colleagues and the ability to plan and co-ordinate the workload of others.
• Experience of working effectively within a team.
• Excellent communication skills (spoken and written) and the ability to develop and maintain positive, professional, working relationships with clients, funders, stakeholders, colleagues, volunteers, creditors and other agencies.
• Proven IT skills including very confident and competent use of Word, Excel, databases, cloud-based systems etc to maintain effective records, administrative and reporting systems.
• A commitment to travelling to various locations as required.
• Understanding of the issues affecting society and their implications for clients and service provision.
• Understanding of and commitment to the aims and principles of the CA service and its equal opportunities policies.
• Qualified and competent money advice and debt caseworker holding the relevant accredited quality standard and other competencies set down by Advice Quality Standard, Money and Pension Service, FCA and/or Institute of Money Advisers.
• Demonstrable and thorough understanding of the application of the debt process in a busy advice organisation and of doing so in a client-centred and efficient way including through working on a Money Advice Service or MAPS funded programme.
• Experience of working effectively with volunteers.
• Hold a current registration as a DRO intermediary.
• Experience of working within a Citizens Advice charity.
• Experience of working with the public in an advisory capacity.

We value diversity, promote equality and challenge discrimination. We welcome applications from all suitably skilled candidates, and particularly from disabled people, people from Black, Asian and other racially minoritised backgrounds, and LGBTQ+ candidates. Please note: These points are all desirable and we don't expect all candidates to fulfil each if they don't have debt advice experience.