Giving a Good Service to Clients – Raising the Standards of Debt Advice

Description of the programme

A first introduction to communication skills for new volunteers and trainees who meet and greet clients, collect their details and help them find supporting information. Also suitable for signposting and referring agencies who need to elicit client information to find the most suitable partner but who don’t give advice themselves.

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

support clients to make use of the advice and guidance service,
develop and manage interviews with clients,
provide information to clients,
enable clients to access referral opportunities,
evaluate and develop your own practice.

Pre-Requisite Learning / Pathway / Accreditation for Prior Learning

This is an entry level course and there is no pre-requisite learning for this programme.

Individual Certification

Attendees are provided with information about MaPS Accreditation of a particular course by email prior to the course date. This information is contained within the booking confirmation email that an attendee receives to confirm their place on a course. It explains which Activity Set the course relates to and, where applicable, other courses that need to be completed within that Activity Set. In this case, the attendee will be advised that this course covers the Initial Contact & Support Activity sets for MaPS accreditation. It also explains that in order to obtain MaPS accreditation, there will be an online test for each course which must be passed.

Once the training has been completed they will receive a certificate to confirm this. This contains a footer explaining that this certificate alone is not proof of completing MaPS accredited training. If the delegate has successfully completed all parts of an accredited learning pathway, an additional certificate will be issued.

Once the test is completed, they receive email confirmation to confirm whether they have passed.

Once they have attended the course and passed the required test, they will receive an Activity Set Certificate, confirming their accreditation up to the level of Initial Contact & Support Work.

What are the outcomes?

This is course is accredited to the debt activity sets described below.

Initial contact activity will involve a member of staff as the first point of contact in the service for the client. They may explain the remit of the service, may gather basic personal information, provide information and/or signpost the client if appropriate.

Support work activity will involve a member of staff providing information relating to the remit of the service, collecting client information, identifying the client’s problem and any related issues, identifying any immediate or urgent priority matters, agreeing appropriate next steps, and signposting or arranging a referral for the client to other services where appropriate.