DWP Advance Customer Service Team Update

Linda Gibb, DWP Advance Customer Service Team Lead for Edinburgh, joined the Edinburgh Advice Partnership meeting in December to talk with the group, and we share some of the key messages from the discussion.

Linda gave an overview of the Advanced Customer Support Service, and full information on this can be found at this DWP Policy Paper. We highlight some of the key messages below:

What is Advanced Customer Support

Because DWP understands and recognises that vulnerable customers require additional support at different times in their lives, we created the Advanced Customer Support (ACS) team within our Customer Experience Directorate, to focus on ensuring we help our most vulnerable customers, across all our services. 

Four Key Teams within Advanced Customer Support:

• Advanced Customer Support Senior Leaders and Operational Delivery Team

We have a network of Advanced Customer Support Senior Leaders (ACSSLs) across Great Britain, who coach and mentor DWP colleagues, across our services, to support customers who are experiencing, or are at risk of, vulnerability.

• ACS Visiting Gateway Team

The team support the national DWP Visiting Service to provide face-to-face support to customers who cannot access the department’s services in any other way. These visits may be required because the customer has complex needs, are disabled, are a vulnerable young person making a claim for the first time, have nobody else to support them, or cannot claim benefits in any other way.

• Serious Case Team

The Serious Case Team help reduce risk and prevent further serious cases by reviewing DWP’s most serious cases through Internal Process Reviews (IPRs), which are in-depth, internal reviews, that look at where and why, the customer experience has fallen short of expected standards and set clear actions for improvement.

• ACS Transformation

As a department we strive to be a learning organisation, and we are committed to improving the service and support we deliver to customers. The ACS Transformation Team was created to focus on the changes that look to improve how we can identify and support our most vulnerable customers. The team does this by taking all the things that we have learnt across ACS and then working with different teams across DWP to make improvements to what we do and how we do it, examples of which are included in this publication.

Referral to the Advanced Customer Support Team

Liam Higgins, the Partnership Manager for Edinburgh, has previously shared the Escalation Routes for Trusted Partners of DWP in Scotland with Edinburgh Advice Members, and this can be found in the Resources Section of the website. The referral information for the Advance Customer Support Team, is listed under Step 3 in this document, and should be used after following the earlier steps for cases where the customer is vulnerable and at serious risk of harm abuse and / or neglect and requires immediate DWP support.

Linda provides further clarity:

'We talked about the fact that often there is need to have exhausted all business as usual routes before an Advanced Customer Service Senior Leader will become involved in a case and whilst that is the intent of the service I think we work in a trusted network of professionals who can assess whether something needs immediate attention and I am happy to do this with colleagues in this group as I think we are all respectful of each other’s roles and responsibilities. If in doubt as discussed Liam your local Partnership Manager is happy to advise and assess when I need to escalate further.'