PRIDE. That’s how Jake Morrison from Citizens Advice Wokingham sums up his experience as chief executive so far.
Thursday, November 19 marked Mr Morrison’s second anniversary leading the charity, and throughout that time he has faced a range of challenges and reaped a lot of rewards for the community.
“It’s been a pleasure to work in Wokingham for the past two years,” he said. “I really enjoy working with people and being out there in the community and I’m looking forward to more.”
When Mr Morrison joined Citizens Advice Wokingham in 2018, he felt there were two key areas where the charity could grow.
He wanted to understand and deliver the services people in Wokingham needed, and create a resilient team that could adapt to different challenges.
“Clearly, we’ve had no greater challenge than the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.
According to Mr Morrison, he has learnt a lot about Wokingham borough’s community during his past two years with the charity.
“The people of Wokingham are certainly very charitable, supportive and want to help,” he said. “We’re never ever short of people wanting to volunteer which is fantastic and a great sign of the area.”
But he also feels that living in Wokingham is “a double-edged sword”.
“We live in one of the most affluent areas of the country,” he explained. “Which is great and clearly people want to live in a really good area like Wokingham.
“But we’ve got issues where there are individuals in our communities who are experiencing hardship, and may not feel as confident about reaching out because they’re surrounded by those who are not in a similar situation.”
According to the chief executive, this has been one of the greatest challenges at Citizens Advice Wokingham — ensuring services are discreet and accessible for those who may not feel confident seeking out support.
“When I took over, feedback from the community was that people are not seeking help because they felt you had to be either unemployed or on benefits to use Citizens Advice,” Mr Morrison explained.
“What I think has been most difficult however is funding. With all the money in the world you can provide all the services in the world, but we don’t have that.
“We need to make decisions all the time about what we can do with the resources that we have.”
And over the last two years, Mr Morrison said he is most proud of the charity’s rapid response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s proven the resilience of the organisation,” he said.
“The only true test of strength is when you’re faced with a challenging situation and need everybody to be able to adapt and respond, and that’s exactly what we did.”
In mid-March, Citizens Advice Wokingham began working with Wokingham Borough Council to help with their Covid response.
It then took just a few days for the One Front Door initiative to be in operation.
“Since January 1, we’ve supported 5,189 people with 12,657 issues. In 2019, we supported 2,700 people in the whole year,” he added. “We’ve massively increased the amount of people that we’ve helped, and all of this is because everybody in our charity makes a valuable contribution.”
And yesterday, the chief executive was awarded for Excellence in Leadership at Citizens Advice’s annual conference.
“I’m delighted to have received this award,” he said. “All of our services across the country have been hugely impacted by the pandemic, and we’re all working hard to meet the needs of our communities.”
Looking forward, Mr Morrison fears that there are hard times ahead for the charity.
“We need to be making sure we remain as resilient as possible because financially, we’re all going to be in a lot of trouble,” he said.
“We’ve answered between 95% and 98% of our demands since April, putting us in the top 20 across the country and we want to keep that going.
“We know that people often talk themselves out of coming and getting help because they don’t want to take up space, but the team will always be happy to go the extra mile to help people and ensure they find that right level of support,” he added.
Citizens Advice Wokingham offers free, confidential support to anybody living or working in Wokingham borough.
To get help, visit: www.citizensadvicewokingham.org.uk, call 0300 330 1189.
