The appointment is to help challenge a decision by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that a woman is ‘Fit for Work’. She also presents a Notice of Seeking Possession letter from her landlord due to rent arrears, wants to discuss deductions from her Universal Credit (UC) and needs a referral to a food bank. Her desperation is apparent, and I know the one hour allocated will not be enough.

Cases like this are now routine and reflect the way welfare reform, rising living costs and cuts to public services create overlapping crises that advice workers are expected to manage. Having briefly worked within the DWP before moving into advice work, I have become increasingly aware of the gap between bureaucratic processes and the lived reality of claimants.

The Citizens Advice Bureau was established in 1939 as an advice service. Since the 1990s, welfare reforms have created a complex system that many of our clients cannot navigate — this is the main reason people come to us. Citizens Advice workers are not simply advisers, but triage workers in an overwhelmed system. We operate as crisis managers within an overstretched welfare system shaped by austerity, digital exclusion and flawed DWP decision making.

The changing nature of advice work

We are seeing a rising number of complex cases. A client may present with one issue, such as their benefits payments being suspended, but on further investigation there will be housing, debt and often mental health issues we need to address. These are not separate issues but interlinked — say a person’s UC is stopped because they missed an appointment as they are caring for a sick relative. This leads to missed rent payments and threatening letters, while credit cards become a means of survival and anxiety grows as debts become unmanageable.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the coalition government attempted to reduce the deficit through large-scale austerity measures — these included cuts to local government, and one of the first things to go was non-statutory services such as advice and guidance. Every day clients tell us they were sent to Citizens Advice by their local authority, often for an issue such as filling a form that the council would previously have been able to assist with.

Rather than investing in training to support vulnerable people who cannot navigate the Universal Credit ‘digital by default’ system, Jobcentre staff routinely signpost people to our offices so they can check their UC journal and provide the evidence requested — we are overstretched, but we push ourselves to help so that they do not suffer sanctions leading to financial hardship.

Triages and moral dilemmas

We do our jobs because we want to support people. Many of us have had to navigate the system ourselves and know its pitfalls. We know how it feels to be told that we cannot be seen for two weeks or, worse, that we are at capacity.

The only way we can operate is to triage and ration time. We have to consider safeguarding and risk to decide what cases we prioritise — if a family is due to be evicted and has young children, this would have to take priority over a single person who has been sanctioned, even where we can see there were no legitimate grounds for the sanction.

We also have to think about our own well-being. A report commissioned by the London Legal Support Trust warned of burnout, low retention and ‘unsustainable work patterns’ across the advice sector, with workers describing themselves as trapped on a ‘hamster wheel’ of relentless crisis management.

We are constantly managing scarcity. We are forced to ration empathy. The moral dilemma is not whether clients deserve support, but deciding who receives limited time in an overwhelmed system.

Flawed decision making and appeals

Another clear example of triaging through Citizens Advice relates to Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Many clients come to us in shock after being refused support, despite having complex health needs that severely impact their daily living and mobility and providing extensive medical and social care evidence.

We know that if they challenge the decision, around a quarter of decisions are changed in the claimant’s favour at the internal DWP ‘Mandatory Reconsideration’ stage. If that fails and it goes to tribunal, the success rate is around two thirds. This seems perverse, and suggests that there is something intrinsically wrong with DWP decision-making, particularly given that in most cases no additional evidence is presented at tribunal.

The moral dilemma is not whether clients deserve support, but deciding who receives limited time in an overwhelmed system

The DWP generate these kinds of disputes faster than we can absorb them. Appealing is a long process that involves several appointments, reviewing lengthy DWP bundles and writing submissions. We need time to develop our knowledge of relevant legislation and case law. This means we cannot take on every appeal, even where we know there is a chance of success and can see the pressure a client is under.

The vast majority of my colleagues when I worked for the DWP were compassionate and wanted to help, but were often restrained by a bureaucratic system focused on targets and cost-cutting rather than people’s lived realities. I increasingly struggled with the disconnect between procedural targets and the realities clients faced, which ultimately influenced my decision to leave.

Citizens Advice feels very different, with the core values of equality, accessibility and independence. With reduced funding and growing caseloads, being accessible to everyone is becoming harder. The focus is on understanding the wider circumstances behind a crisis, but sustaining that approach is becoming difficult.

What is being lost?

Citizens Advice is absorbing failures elsewhere, stepping in to compensate for a shrinking and underfunded welfare state. We are no longer simply providing advice, but managing emergencies on a daily basis. This often involves making difficult decisions that do not always feel comfortable, affecting both staff and clients alike. Austerity is reshaping support systems in ways that feel unsustainable. What is being lost is not only capacity, but the possibility of genuinely humane support.

Many advisers would like to see increased investment in local welfare advice services. This would increase capacity and allow more time for education, early intervention and crisis prevention. We would also like to see a simpler benefits system with support — rather than bureaucracy, gatekeeping and punitive measures — at its centre. Finally, there needs to be greater emphasis on evidence-based decision-making.