Our Financial Capability Advisor reflects on the year to date for the Advice Service
As the Financial Capability Advisor working for our foodbank operation, this past year has been both challenging and rewarding—though not in ways I always anticipated.
In the New Year, I began with optimism and determination. The bump in referrals in the post-Christmas period, was slightly down from the previous year, which was a good sign. But in mid-March, my work took an unexpected pause when my mother fell ill. I stepped back to care for her as she went through hospitalisation and a brief spell in a care home, before she passed away at the end of April. It was a difficult time, and I'm grateful to the foodbank for their understanding and support during this period. I returned to work on the 12th May, a little before her funeral at the end of last month.
There's a curious gift in difficult times—they clarify what matters. Being away, caring for my mother, and then grieving her loss has deepened my appreciation for the work we do here. When you're at your lowest, facing uncertainty and loss, you understand viscerally what our clients experience. And when you can help someone move from that place of crisis to stability, it feels like more than just work. That said, my absence from mid-March to mid-May necessarily disrupted the flow of the Advice Service. However, we've still achieved significant impact in the time we have been operating. To date, we've received 55 referrals. Just under half of these have developed into longer pieces of advice work, and through our interventions, we've achieved financial gains totalling £7,380.42 for our clients. These are real differences in real people's lives.
Underpinning this work are the partnerships and volunteers who make it possible. Guy at Christians Against Poverty (CAP) has been extraordinary—his debt work with our foodbank clients has resulted in £56,768 being written off. That's transformative for people weighed down by overwhelming debt. Then there are our volunteers, Peter and Sheila. Peter, has continued to develop his budgeting work with clients, helping them reshape their budgets and identify genuine savings. And Sheila continues to be invaluable, conducting the initial fact-finding phone appointments with new referrals which enables the Advice Service to pick up the work with each referral within a week, sometimes the same week. Without all there help I wouldn’t be able to achieve what we do.
As well as benefit checks and the like, one case exemplifies what I’ve been trying to do in moving into exploring how we can get clients back into work, if they are able. There is no better way out of poverty. An Army veteran was referred to us in early March. The Veterans Hub in Hastings had already helped him secure housing, but he'd been out of work for some time. He was working with the Job Centre, but they weren't able to offer the financial support he needed for the training and licence to return to his chosen field of security and close protection work. What struck us was his clear motivation and potential—he wanted to work. We identified that we could fund a course for him to regain his Security Industry Authority licence and we are lucky enough to have a small pot of funding that can be used flexibly for things like this. He's now working with a security agency providing guards to retail shops, with his sights set on progressing to close protection work. That's the kind of transformative support we're here to provide.
Our recent move from our Sackville Road office to the new Amherst Road office (with warehouse space, etc) has gone well. It’s a great space with office and meeting rooms all set up now. There remains some unused, flexible space downstairs. The Advice Service will definitely be involved in how that space develops and is used.
Looking forward, I'll be trialing monthly visits to our different sites: Pebsham on the first Wednesday of each month, St Mary's on the second Wednesday, and Station Road on the third Tuesday. This will help me identify clients who would benefit from advice and support, meeting them where they are rather than waiting for referrals. We'll see how it works, but I think it might help us reach people.
I'm grateful—to my colleagues for their support during a difficult period, and most of all, to the clients who trust us with their concerns and their hopes for a better future. That trust, and the privilege of helping people rebuild their lives, is what makes this work so meaningful.