Lots has already been said about how this winter will be a perfect storm with rocketing household bills and the removal of protections for those impacted financially by the pandemic. Evictions and debt collections have already resumed. The end of furlough will trigger redundancies. The withdrawal of the Universal Credit (UC) uplift will push millions to the brink. It must be bad: The media have been challenging politicians for slashing benefits.
There can be a lot of hand-wringing within the voluntary sector and, of course, without assertive campaigning we might never have seen some of the most important reforms and U-turns. But in terms of what matters to people at the hardest end of social crises, it’s the grassroots organisations that often make the biggest difference. Foodbanks organised by volunteers shocked to see families unable to feed their children remind me of the nightshelters run by churches in the ’80s and early ’90s. They just wanted to get people out of the elements. Community halls became dorms and hot soup was on tap. It wasn’t the solution but it was a holding pattern while campaigners held governments to account for what is horribly described today as a social ‘market failure’.
I spent this week with four incredible women. (Five, when I count the Clean Slate service manager who also attended.) I was back to the shopfloor delivering our ‘7 Signs’ jobseeker training. I find people’s stories and sometimes hidden resilience and resourcefulness a constant source of inspiration. It’s the reason Clean Slate has always recruited people off these courses to join us as Peer Workers. Jobseekers know what jobseekers need. Claimants know what claimants need. They engage people with our support and training delivered by professional Support Workers. They tell Clean Slate how to do better. They speak the right language, and in East London, where I was this week, I mean that literally.
The target audience doesn’t worry about how to change the government’s mind. They want to know how to keep their kids fed, the lights on and a roof over their head
During lockdown, it would not have been okay to recruit Peer Workers to work from home, (which many would have been unable to do anyway), making calls to people in deep distress and often despair. But two things happened instead: We realised Peer Workers already on our books were now well qualified to take up Support Worker roles. And with that being the case, we should offer that same progression path to all future Peers, starting with the four women I met in Bow. Instead of hand-wringing, they’re eager to roll up their sleeves and see what they and we can do.
We will launch a new drop-in service in East London, our third Quids In Centre, during London Challenge Poverty Week, (11th – 17th October), which follows Challenge Poverty Week the week before. That same week we will launch a mobile money support service for homeless people. We are publishing a guide to the dangers of loan sharks, in English and Bengali. And the 11th edition of the Quids in! Guide to Universal Credit will roll off the presses.
Quids in! is the money skills initiative run by Clean Slate Training & Employment CIC. All its publications, web resources and toolkits focus on the immediate needs of readers and programme participants. The target audience doesn’t worry about how to change the government’s mind. They want to know how to keep their kids fed, the lights on and a roof over their head. We present tips, one by one, to people looking for help, one by one. Before we know it, we’ve reached 60,000 readers of our guides, quarterly magazines and Readers Club emails. Or we’ve supported 2,000+ people referred to us in the past year for a money health-check who amassed, one by one, average financial gains of about £1,000. Yes, about the same as the uplift that’s just being removed from UC.
Winter is coming and I feel like I mean that in the Game of Thrones kinda way: A fight to the death to prevent Armageddon. All Clean Slate and Quids in! plans to do is hunker down and help keep people keeping on. We support the campaigning. But if you need us, we’ll be on the front.
Image: Courtesy of HBO
