What inspires me to come to work every day is making a difference to someone’s life. The greatest happiness one can get is to give someone else happiness. I feel very privileged to be able to help people overcome their challenges.
A joined-up approach
For more than 20 years Nishkam Civic Association has been offering support to people in Birmingham and predominantly in the North-West of Birmingham. We pride ourselves on our integrated system of working at the advice centre. Our Wednesday drop-in sessions ensure we offer a joined-up approach so that clients can access all they need in one place. We triage people quickly, connecting them to a range of services at the centre including housing experts, case workers as well as representatives from Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This includes advice about employment issues, return to work as well as support with Adult Social Services.
Our advice service is only one aspect of the support available here. Our Start of Life Care project offers essential support to mothers to help their children get the best start in life and to build positive early learning environments. Our Family Support Hub offers help to families with multiple issues, designed to overcome barriers and to build strong and more resilient families. We also offer leadership development programmes and apprenticeships in a wide range of subjects.
Positive change
It is so rewarding to see the impact of our advice work – not only on individuals, but also on their families and the community around them. I see people enter our centre with their heads low and I see the stress on their faces. By the time they leave, you can see a real tangible positive change – we have given them hope. We have put in place a plan for how we will help them, and you can see how that changes them: it’s real transformation.
I trained as an employment law specialist but went into welfare advice because I could see the evidence of impact that advice work has. There is so much interconnectedness in the work we do, and I enjoy drawing on every resource available to provide the maximum support to people. Every day I witness how our team can turn people’s lives around and I just go home buzzing.
Collective impact
I am pleased to support the Advice Saves campaign as it’s so important to raise awareness of the work independent advice services do in transforming lives. If you take just one experience of one person’s life changing for the better and multiply that across all the many hundreds of advice centres across the UK, you can see the total impact of our work.
Advice should be a basic human right. People can face many barriers and should have access to free advice that is confidential, accessible, professional – and personalised to their needs. The advice sector changes lives.
Funding challenge
Despite over 20 years of delivering highly effective support services to our local community, we are experiencing a severe funding challenge. We have had major grants from the National Lottery Fund and other major funders, but as these are coming to an end, we are struggling to find the level of funds we need to continue.
I worry what would happen to the people in our local community if they were not able to continue to access the support we provide. We are the community safety net. We are in an area of high deprivation and have built up a high level of trust. If we don’t have the funding to continue our work, we’ll leave the community at a cliff edge.
The three most important things to describe our advice service are: lifesaving, vital and being here for all communities. I am determined to continue our search for further funding and a more secure future for our organisation so that we can continue to offer life-saving work.
