Aadhila*, who is in her 40s, sees the effects of the cost of living crisis the most in her weekly food shop. “I feel it the most with food, because we’ve tried the process of not buying branded food, but even then the cost is still high,” she says. “I can use less heating, put more socks on and switch off more lights or only heat two rooms … but for food I’m not sure what else you can reduce. I said to my sister, ‘Do we just fast?’”

One of her two children is autistic, and Aadhila has come to Citizens Advice for help renewing her disability benefits and applying for a grant from Family Fund, a charity providing grants for families bringing up disabled children. But rather than having to travel halfway across Tower Hamlets to visit the Citizens Advice East End office, and join the long queue there for an appointment, Aadhila is able to arrange to speak quickly and easily to one of their advisers based at Marner primary school, where she drops her children off.

In a small classroom, Aadhila has a free, confidential hour-long meeting with Tasneem, a Citizens Advice adviser, about her applications, a service she did not realise was available. Rather, she had toiled for several monthswith the extensive benefitsforms on her own. The chances are the expert advice will be well worth her while.

Tower Hamlets, where Aadhila lives, is one of the UK’s poorest areas. Child poverty rates there stood at 51% in 2020-21, the highest in the UK – even before the cost of living crisis began to hit hard. Over the past few months Citizens Advice East End has worked closely with families caught up in the crisis. From debt and rent arrears to benefits issues and crisis support, their advisers have helped pull thousands of clients back from the brink, stabilising them financially, and often emotionally.

Its case records are a vivid document of poverty in 2022, capturing a surge in hardship commonly marked by debt, ill-health, disability and family breakdown. Clients, not infrequently coming to them facing eviction, hunger and crippling energy bills, have been guided expertly through the maze of the welfare safety net, often registered for life-saving grants and benefits they did not know they were entitled to.

Feedback from delighted clients is testimony to the difference made by Citizens Advice East End’s advisers. As one put it: “I felt embarrassed asking for help but my adviser made me feel like there was nothing to be embarrassed about and did not judge me like other people have done in the past.”

Its outreach programme, which enables advisers to see clients in spaces more convenient to them, such as schools and hospitals, has been crucial in widening access to the help and support it gives to vulnerable people, not least by raising its visibility in the community.

“I think because we’re now working in schools, parents know about the service and what we can offer them,” Tasneem says. “We can help them apply for benefits, help sort out reviews and appeals to existing benefits, and they may not know we could help with this unless we came into schools.”

Citizens Advice is one of the 2022 Guardian and Observer charity appeal’s two partner charities. Its share of donations raised by the appeal will support general services and innovative outreach work at its branches in some of the UK’s most deprived neighbourhoods. The appeal, which continues into the new year, had raised more than £1,050,000 by midday on Friday.

The idea for the outreach service in primary schools came when advisers realised many parents were approaching teachers for help in coping with the cost of living crisis.

According to Carol Doherty, assistant head teacher at Marner primary school, where more than 40% of children are entitled to free school meals, the presence of Citizens Advice has been immensely positive: “It’s made a huge difference to a lot of parents, [helping us with] things we don’t have time or expertise in,” Doherty says. “Our children work better if their parents are in a good place. It’s [about] the whole family.”

The current funding allows advisers to hold school outreach sessions just twice a week. But Ali Halil, a Citizens Advice East End manager, is hoping that with extra resources, they will be able to host the outreach programme more often and in more schools: “The feedback we’ve had has been fantastic, not only from the parents but from the teachers and the school itself – with more funding we’d be able to go into more schools for four or five days a week.”

*Name has been changed