08/06/2006
To celebrate this anniversary, 1 June 2006 we organized the conference “From advice to action”. We have summed up CABs achievements, we talked about the benefits of access to the free citizens advice (drawing on the examples from Poland and Great Britain) and we presented our plans for the future.
Our invitation was accepted by many persons, whose attendance was a great honour for us. The conference was opened by Charles Crawford – UK Ambassador to Poland, David Harker – Chief Executive Citizens Advice UK and Dr Janusz Bogumił Kochanowski – Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection.
In the panel discussion “The future of Citizens Advice in Poland” participated: Michał Guć (Vice-president of Gdynia), Magdalena Kochan (Parliamentary Social Policy Committee), Halina Lipke (Director of Social Policy in Mazovian Voivodship Office in Warsaw), Grzegorz Wiaderek (Stefan Batory Foundation) and Anna Wojakowska- Skiba (Polish-American Freedom Foundation).
Most of the panelists held the view that in the situation of limited financial resources the “mobile” advice is the most cost-effective way to develop citizens advice. They underlined the importance of making local and government administration realize that social advice is not a competition, but a partner institution which can help social services.
What is most important is the cooperation with local governments’ organizations: showing CAB as a part of managing the city/district, enabling to create the social policy based on statistics of CAB’s clients.
During the conference we’ve presented the key conclusions of “Social monitoring. How to campaign more efficiently for changes in social policy” project (Phare 2003 project, realized since January 2006 and financed by European Union and Polish government).
Drawing on the British experience in campaigning for changes that improve situation of average citizens and considering the capabilities of CAB network in Poland, we want to create a system of researching, gathering the evidence and campaigning for change in Polish realities.
Our first campaign will focus on preventing the debt inheritance.
From our CABs we know that ignorance of inheritance law is very common. It can lead to real tragedies, when the inheritance is associated with enormous debt that our client is not capable of paying.
The results of our survey on the knowledge of inheritance law (conducted by 15 CABs with 513 clients) show that 87% of the respondents could suffer the negative consequences of their ignorance.
The change could be brought about without changing the law and spending big money. The citizens could receive the basic information on the inheritance law in register office when receiving the certificate of death. As a first move, CAB Warsaw tries to raise the funds from FIO to print 20 thousand leaflets that could be distributed in 65 Mazovian districts.
From left:David Harker (Chief Executive Citizens Advice UK), dr Janusz Kochanowski (Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection), Ija Ostrowska (Chairwoman of Union of Citizen Advice Bureaux), Charles Crawford (UK Ambassador to Poland), Hanna Gorska (Directo