Coventry City Council has launched a Skills Survey and are asking for Coventry residents to take part.

Anyone taking part can be entered into a prize draw for a £50 Love2Shop voucher. The link is below.

https://letstalk.coventry.gov.uk/coventry-skills-survey

The Skills Survey has been designed to find out Coventry residents’ views on skills provision in the City. This includes looking at whether residents know what is available, can get appropriate advice and guidance, and find courses that meet their individual needs (e.g. fit around existing work/childcare commitments).

They are also looking at factors which may prevent people from accessing skills provision and considering access across different areas of the City within Coventry’s diverse communities. 

The survey is intended to help inform the council what is working/not working and help all our skills providers in shaping their delivery to meet resident needs. It will also help inform a wider Coventry Skills Strategy.

As part of our service strategy we are starting to work alongside community partners to provide some advice and support services, by appointment only, back in the community. These partners include ‘grub hubs’, social supermarkets, Family Hubs and other community organisations. We are working closely with these services to help ensure that the people who need our help most get help at the earliest possible stage.

Please note that we are not offering public ‘drop-in’ services at the moment. The advice that we are able to offer in the community is strictly by appointment and based on need identified with our partners and our advisers. The first point of contact for advice is still our telephone and online service.

During the pandemic we have learned that a lot of people in the city did not want to, or were unable to, wait in queues to be seen. Often we had to turn people away because of high demand and we didn’t want to do this. Lots of people have told us they would prefer to contact us by phone or online as it was more convenient and appropriate to their needs. But we also know that some people really need help in person, face to face, and so we are focusing that part of our service on the people who need it most.

To help us to offer these services, we have made some changes to the operating hours of our public telephone advice service. Although we have reduced the hours that the service is available, there will be more advisers on the line each day so you should find it easier to get through to an adviser when you call.

If you have any feedback on our new ways of working, please let us know.

We are proud to announce that we have been awarded the ‘Thrive at Work’ Foundation level accreditation in recognition of our work to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone in our charity. Our aim is for all our colleagues to experience good health and wellbeing and to strike a positive work-life balance.

The Thrive At Work programme is accredited by the West Midlands Combined Authority. We hope you will join us in celebrating our success!

In the coming weeks and months we will start to offer some of our services ‘face to face’ again (initially by appointment only). In order to help us manage this we are making a few changes to the hours that our telephone advice line is available.

The changes will mean that more advisers will be on the line at the same time, meaning it should be easier to speak to an adviser even though our operating hours are reduced.

Full details of our services can be found on our ‘get advice’ page. That page will be updated as further changes are made to improve our service delivery and as we return to offering more advice in person.

We are saddened to learn that our friend and former colleague, Lawrence Blanc, passed away on Monday 7th June 2021.

Lawrence was a valued member of our team and played an important role in the continuing development of our Debt and Money Advice work. All our thoughts are with his wife, family, friends and colleagues at this time.

Lawrence was a well respected, kind and gentle man who left a great impression on all who knew him. He will be greatly missed. May he rest in peace.

We have added a new video to our website that goes through the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claim form and offers help if you need to fill one in. You can find the video on YouTube (with an index to the sections of the form) or watch it in full below. The video is 19 minutes long.

The video was produced by students at Warwick University who worked with our advice team.