AIG blog with Chair of the Group, Liz Barclay

When I started my career, in Citizens Advice eons ago, I loved the people who brought increasingly complex, multifaceted problems. We informed, supported, empowered. But I worried about the ones who, despite their need for help, walked on by.

We struggled with how to engage people who weren’t engaged. We didn’t serve our whole community. We were welcoming to some but not all. Why?

Citizens Advice then had a ‘twin set and pearls’ reputation. I was immensely proud of our wonderfully diverse employees and volunteers – a mixed bag of retired and working people.  We had a good age and gender balance and many other, some invisible, diversity ‘boxes’ ticked. Not a twinset in sight but still not everyone thought we were ‘for them’.

We did a community profile, a comprehensive study that told us who was living in our catchment area: small groups of people who’d arrived fairly recently from Eastern Europe; larger long standing populations of Chinese and Asian people; transient workers from everywhere in the port and fisheries sectors. Why weren’t they coming through our doors? We could help them. We went out and asked. The majority ‘didn’t think it was for us’.

It’s a catch 22. If you don’t have people coming in it’s easy to assume they don’t need your services. But if they don’t see anything for them they won’t come in. We have to break the logjam. As soon as we actively  found and enlisted a Chinese volunteer the Chinese community heard and arrived. They no longer felt excluded from our services or worried about being judged.

Being diverse isn’t enough. We have to be inclusive too, with products and services that will suit everyone.

I set up 3 new Citizens Advice Offices with diversity and inclusion priorities in recruitment and staffing policy. The Citizens Advice I was involved with most recently, as chair, had employees and volunteers who spoke 27 different languages. Even then I was told I’d never succeed in increasing the diversity on the Board. It took conscious effort, knowing the communities in our catchment area, and building relationships with them.

When you succeed the result is a wealth of diverse experience, thinking, and perspective that adds up to more inclusivity for more people and better outcomes. I believe we can do that in the CU sector too.