Citizens Information Service in Mayo centres extend drop-in hours to meet demand

SOUTH Connacht Citizens Information Service (SCCIS) has announced the extension of drop-in hours at offices in Castlebar and Ballina to meet the growing demand for its services from the public.

SCCIS provides a free and confidential information, advice and advocacy service to the public in areas such as social welfare, employment rights, housing, health, immigration, money and tax across the region.

Commenting on the extended hours, Tomás Lally, development manager in Mayo, stated ‘Over the last number of months we have seen a steady growth in the numbers of people looking to access our services in person.

“In response to this growing demand, we are increasing drop-in hours in our two main centres in Castlebar and Ballina.”

SCCIS recently published its annual report for 2022 which shows that the Mayo service dealt with 12,172 clients and answered 22,500 queries in 2022.

The single largest category of query dealt with by the service was social welfare which accounted for 50% of all queries.

The other largest query types were housing (9%), employment (7%) and health (7%).

As well as providing information and advice to people on their rights and entitlements, SCCIS also provides an advocacy service, empowering people by supporting them to assert their rights and claim their entitlements.

Where necessary the service represents clients and negotiates on their behalf.

The advocacy work undertaken by SCCIS makes a real impact on the lives of clients, whether it is helping them get a social welfare payment, get on the housing waiting list or get a redundancy payment when they lose their job.

The service undertakes an annual client satisfaction survey to better understand what clients think of the service they receive.

The survey consistently returns very positive feedback from service users.

In 2022, 96.5 % of clients surveyed were either very satisfied or satisfied with the service they received while 99 % of clients surveyed said that would recommend the service to someone with similar requirements to themselves.

You can also find information on your rights and entitlement on: www.citizensinformation.ie