In January of this year, the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) published their 10-year Strategy for Financial Wellbeing in the UK. The strategy comes on the back of a year spent drawing together research on the state of the nation’s finances, during which MaPs received information from thousands of individuals and organisations working on the frontline of the UK’s financial coal face. The result of the extensive research is that MaPS have identified five key areas of focus that will go towards improving financial wellbeing. 

The five areas are:

• Accessing debt advice
• Saving regularly
• Managing credit
• Getting a meaningful financial education
• Making good decisions about future wellbeing

These areas come out of some brutal (but, for many working in the field, not unexpected) statistics. Firstly, and most starkly, was the high proportion of people in debt who have not had access to the help they need. Sixty eight per cent (around 3.5 million people) of those who needed debt advice haven’t been able to receive the advice they need. The strategy aims to provide another two million people with debt advice by 2030.

The next target revolves around savings, and again the figures are grim. Of working age adults, 43 per cent don’t save regularly. The figure indicates that almost half the working age population are without any protection against financial shocks, at a point where many economists suggest the economic future for the UK will be volatile and difficult to forecast. Again, the MaPS strategy is to bring another two million in the UK into the habit of saving regularly by 2030. 

The other three themes are around reducing the number of people using credit to pay for food and bills (from 9 million adults to 7 million), improving financial education for children and young people (from 4.8 million to 6.8 million) and helping more people understand and plan towards their pension (from 23.6 million to 28.6 million adults). 

Launching the strategy, Caroline Siarkiewicz, Chief Executive of MaPS said: “The Money and Pensions Service will be the catalyst for a financial wellbeing movement, transforming how people engage with their money and pensions. We have a decade to make a difference and we cannot achieve change alone, so we will be connecting companies, charities and other organisations which share our vision, to make this happen.”

This is where the work of Clean Slate, the training and education arm of Quids in! comes in. For over a decade, Clean Slate has provided front line employability and money skills training to those who need it most. Working with people on low-incomes, Clean Slate has developed training around financial resilience and a number of guides, tools and resources that are proven to help people improve their financial wellbeing. The content of the training almost exactly mirrors the priorities of the MaPS strategy, with the overarching mantra of encouraging participants to: spend less, save more, borrow less and earn more. 

Having delivered the training successfully to thousands of individuals, Clean Slate is now offering training to non-financial advisors in health, housing and employment support to increase their confidence and access practical support to talk money with their service users, tenants and customers. The workshops are on offer to organisations that recognise the role they play in tackling financial hardship, and benefit staff in the following ways:

• Participants will understand the principles of promoting financial resilience and leave feeling confident to talk money with clients within professional boundaries, able to offer guidance (promoting self-help) but knowing when to signpost financial advice, if required (a regulated activity).
• Having identified team and personal goals that could be achieved through clients’ improved financial resilience, individuals feel more motivated and action-oriented.
• Attendees will continue learning through using the toolkit within their job role, observing the impact on individual clients.

As Jeff Mitchell, Founder and Director of Clean Slate said: ‘Clean Slate has been pushing the areas of focus in the MaPS Strategy for a number of years, and we’re pleased that the strategy will raise financial wellbeing up the national agenda. What is absolutely key is for a broad alliance of organisations working with people in financial hardship to come together to help deliver on these targets. We can help pass on our expertise to make that happen.’  
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The MaPS 10-year Strategy sets out a bold framework for improving the financial wellbeing of residents in the UK, which until now has lagged badly behind other G20 countries in this area. If the strategic aims of the strategy are to be met, it will require a decade of working hard to encourage, educate and empower the many millions of people in this country who are suffering financial hardship.

For more information on Clean Slate’s training, or to book a training session for your organisation, please contact Lisa Woodman, Partnerships Manager at: [email protected]. Or click here.