Introducing the mobile phone toolkit January, 2018 This presentation can be used as a foundation for your own; please feel free to add more slides and amend as you wish.

Introduction to the toolkit Welcome to the mobile phone toolkit. In this resource, you will find tips and guidance to help front-line practitioners working with clients that need support with their mobile phone contracts and debts. So who made it? Development of this toolkit has been a collaboration between the consumer education and financial capability teams, and it is hosted both within the Financial Capability and Consumer Education sections of the Citizens Advice website. It exists to help and support agencies – and local Citizens Advice offices – provide financial capability to clients with a specific need. We highly recommend bringing a physical ‘master copy’ of the toolkit along to show to people

Why is it needed? Every year, people come to Citizens Advice with approximately 60,000 enquiries about telephone and broadband debts. In 2014/15, Citizens Advice provided clients with in-depth specialist casework for nearly 27,000 mobile phone debts totalling nearly £11million. Research conducted with Citizens Advice debt advisers revealed that debt collection practices in the mobile phone sector have fallen behind those found in other essential markets, including water and energy. As a result of this, Citizens Advice launched their Dialling Down Debt campaign in early 2017: this toolkit formed a key part of that campaign to provide support to local offices at this key time.

Is it for advisers, or clients? The toolkit is written in plain language that is appropriate for clients to access and use any part of it that they wish. In fact, it contains many handouts and factsheets that advisers are encouraged to give to clients to take away. That said, some sections are aimed more directly at advisers. These sections will be noted clearly in the top-right corner of the page, and those sections aimed directly at clients will similarly be labelled clearly as shown.   Advisers   Handout

Structure of the toolkit Activities   1 – Technical terms 2 – Contracts 3 – Billing 4 – Upgrading contracts 5 – Consumer rights 6 – Mobile phone debts Taking out a contract Having a contract Sorting out problems with a contract The activities in this toolkit can be used in the following ways As a single session with a group of clients Individually depending on a client’s stage in the purchasing process. Note that the six activities within the toolkit are structured to split the experience of our clients into three chronological stages, as show here.

What happens next? The Mobile Phone Toolkit is provided for all local Citizens Advice and partner organisations to use, but – like all our toolkits - is not a ‘work-in-progress’ and should be used as such. New versions will be uploaded online at regular intervals, in response to continued feedback and practical testing. We welcome all feedback. The Mobile Phone toolkit is available on our website with the rest of the financial capability resource library, as well as within the Consumer Education resource library. This presentation is also available to be downloaded from the same resource offer. Refer to the Frequently Asked Questions in the Toolkit Introduction to field the most common questions you will be asked at this point

For any further information or feedback, contact us at Financial For any further information or feedback, contact us at Financial.Skills@citizensadvice.org.uk

The Financial Skills for Life team Bas Diablos Financial Capability Development Lead Basam.Diablos@citizensadvice.org.uk David Mahon Training & resources 03000 231 582 Melanie McGinn Consumer Education Development Consultant Melanie.McGinn@citizensadvice.org.uk Basam is attached to the FSfL team, but also works across other teams and divisions equally.

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