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CAS sent a briefing to MSPs ahead of the 'Building a Social Security System Together: Co-designing the Social Security Charter' debate, highlighting suggestions for the Charter from CAB clients and advisers and encouraging an approach of co-production with people who have direct experience of using the current social security system.

CAS supported the devolution of employment programmes, as it represents the opportunity to provide schemes that more effectively support long-term unemployed people into work, based on the positive employability programmes already existing in Scotland.

Our series of briefings, 'Voices from the Frontline', demonstrates the impact of changes to the UK social security system on people in Scotland. This latest briefing considers the impact of deductions from Universal Credit payments.

Citizens Advice Scotland received 232 responses to the Patient Advice and Support Service (PASS) client feedback survey between 1st April 2018 and 31st March 2019.  Client satisfaction is high with 96% of respondents stating that they were either very satisfied (86%) or satisfied (10%) with the service.

Some people can only access the internet through their smartphone. When CAS surveyed clients, we found that this was the case for more than 1 in 10 respondents - 20% of all respondents who said they used the internet at all.

 This report looks in more detail at these consumers, analysing their characteristics and assessing their digital access and skills.

Briefing on paid staff and volunteers; types of services provided to compliment the generalist service; client financial gains; how clients contacted CAB and the work undertaken by CAB in addition to giving advice.

Statistical briefing on advice given; client demographics based on an annual survey of CAB clients undertake for 4 weeks in November 2017 including comparison to SIMD data.

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) have already stated that we believe that further roll out and managed migration of UC should be paused until the many issues affecting our clients have been resolved. We note that the intention is to start migration on a small scale from January 2019 before ramping up volumes once process has been tested. While CAS welcomes the changes that have been made to UC during roll out it is clear that there are still issues to be resolved. To proceed with managed migration before resolving all the issues will negatively impact a significant number of people.

In 2017/18, Scotland’s CAB network provided advice on 19,047 issues related to Universal Credit (UC), which by the end of the period had only been rolled out to around half of Scotland’s local authority areas. Additionally, CAB advised clients on 10,562 Working Tax Credit and 11,499 Child Tax Credit issues, which are the main in-work benefits that will be replaced by UC.

The Energy Advice in Detail report provides an annual assessment of the energy issues clients of the Citizens Advice network in Scotland sought assistance with, and places those within a wider policy context.