IT is a staggering figure:

clients at the Drumchapel Citizens Advice Bureau made financial gains of more than £3 million last year as a direct result of help they received.

For many, that money has been vital to put food on the table, stop an eviction notice or put a halt to their power supply being cut off.

For local mum Joanne King it helped her to pay the taxi fares to take her son John back and forth to Yorkhill Sick Children's Hospital for urgent treatment.

John was diagnosed with junior arthritis when he was just four years old.

"For a while he couldn't walk in the mornings, so I had to carry him from his bed to the living room and sometimes I even had to carry him to school," explains Joanne.

"I was working and didn't know anything about benefits. I didn't know what I was entitled to."

The arthritis started in John's knee, ankle and foot but has now spread.

He was given a speedy diagnosis by doctors at Yorkhill but still has to regularly attend appointments and get injections every week in each leg. The side effects of the drugs are that he is often sick and feels unwell.

"Sometimes in the morning he has stepped out of bed and then had to sit back down again because he's in that much pain," says Joanne.

"I have to help him in and out of bed. In the mornings I need to either carry him downstairs, and sometimes in the morning he can feel quite dizzy because of the medicine he is on.

"He goes to a local school but my mum has to come and take us because I don't drive. It is only a 10-minute walk but for him it's like a half-hour walk. In the mornings he's sore and stiff and the last thing he wants to do is walk to school."

Alhough both Joanne and her husband John were both working, they had been told their son would qualify for Disability Living Allowance.

When Joanne first enquired about applying for this, CAB staff helped her fill out the forms.

The Department of Work and Pensions said John didn't qualify, as his care was no different from any other child of that age.

CAB staff pointed out that John's needs were very different, so they applied for a reconsideration and by Christmas last year the benefit was approved.

The allowance of £77 a week helps Joanne pay for John's care and, more importantly, pay taxi fares to take him to Yorkhill for appointments, blood tests and treatment.

"It all goes on transport for John," explains Joanne."The benefit makes a big difference."

She adds: "The help at the CAB was great. They don't judge anyone."

The CAB service marks its 75th anniversary this year and the Drumchapel bureau marked 50 years last year with a civic reception at Glasgow City Council.

"It has been a hectic year with financial changes taking place under welfare reform," explains Drumchapel bureau manager Hugh O'Neill.

"Probably the biggest changes were the so-called bedroom tax and benefit sanctions.

"Many social policy issues were raised and I'm pleased to say Drumchapel has been particularly pro-active."

Battling the bureaucratic system is all in a day's work for the CAB.

One woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, explains how she was left at the end of her tether after correspondence with the Department of Work and Pensions.

When she was 58 she took early retirement through ill health.

"I then had a horrendous carry on," she remembers. "I have worked full-time for 40 years and never claimed benefits.

"I was in a management post and quite capable, I thought, of applying and had even helped other people do it.

"It went on for so long I couldn't face fighting it. That was when I realised I needed to see someone about this, it was affecting my health."

She was put on Employment Support Allowance, payments started then stopped and she was forced to live on her savings.

"All through this I was paying a mortgage, council tax, gas and electricity -everything you would normally pay," she says.

"I had taken a lump sum with my pension so I had to use that to live on. I have no income."

Finally she was told she had been overpaid by nearly £200 and to return the amount - and because she was still pursuing the case she then received a £50 civil penalty fine.

"I was absolutely horrified. I couldn't believe someone was putting some kind of fine on me. I tried to argue with them myself and phone calls went backwards and forwards.

"I was questioning the £50 fine, asked them to investigate it and said I wasn't prepared to pay it. I thought I was capable of making an appeal."

By this time her case had been handed to a debt collection agency to retrieve the £50 fine and she was receiving phone calls and texts.

"I was in such a state, every time I thought about it I was bursting into tears. That's when I spoke to the CAB.

"The CAB girls have been my saviour. I don't know what I would have done without them."

Calls from the debt collection agency stopped and the fine was dropped. Now, a year on she is still not receiving any money while she waits for a medical to certify that she cannot work.

"It's still ongoing but I'm a lot further forward than I was," she says.

"I was hitting my head off a brick wall, I would never have reached this stage if it hadn't been for the CAB. I couldn't have done it on my own simply because of what I was up against."

angela.mcmanus@ eveningtimes.co.uk