Well, what a year. Again. We’ve gone from lockdown to ‘freedom day’ and then back to more uncertainty with the arrival of Omicron. The end of the Universal Credit uplift and furlough were two of the big welfare news stories of the year with wide-ranging consequences for our clients – and many others on low incomes. So no wonder our first ever online event, organised to bring professionals together to discuss these issues, was a sellout last month.
Here’s a look back at what else we were up to in 2021.
January
We welcomed the first of more than 500 West Londoners who claim benefits for six weeks of money guidance support. With funding from DWP, we took participants through our Money Health-Check service – over the phone due to lockdown. The health-check is based on our successful Future-Proof Finance Quiz and generates a series of next steps for participants to follow on their path to financial resilience. The first of over 200 from Wales joined in January too and by the end of the year there were more from Essex, East London and East Anglia. By the end of the year more than 600 clients had completed a six-week budgeting support programme with an average annual gain of £1,014. More than 400 claimants struggling with the financial crisis would also go on to make gains of over £2,000 with a 12-week programme of support. In total, this put well over a million pounds into the pockets of people who really needed it. Not bad going!
February
Digital inclusion is a core part of our mission and back in February we teamed up with sustainability group Hubbub to support Bristolians who were left digitally excluded during lockdown. As part of the Community Calling campaign, O2 and Hubbub donated 1,000 smartphones and 12 months of data, via community groups, while we were on hand to offer money management guidance through engaging videos. Participants also received copies of Quids in! Magazine and the Quids in! Budget Planner, helping them cope with the squeeze on their budgets.
March
In March we published our impact report, Fixing our Finances, reviewing our achievements over the first quarter of the year. The findings were good – very good, in fact. They showed that after taking our Future-Proof Finance Quiz participants’ attitudes and habits began to change. They felt more able to find the help they needed and their food security improved. Of the three levels of guidance we offer, the shortest (two to three sessions) brought average gains of £317. Five to six weeks of guidance brought average gains of £950, and for guidance of 12 weeks the gains averaged £2,250. There will be an updated impact report in the new year – contact [email protected] if you’d like to receive it.
April
We were tackling the digital divide again in April. With funding from central government, we teamed up with Wiltshire Digital Drive to get refurbished laptops into the hands of people who struggled to get online and access the benefits that brings. We threw in our Money Health-Check and one-to-one support for all those who received a laptop. And as an added bonus, the scheme also kept a whole load of usable tech out of landfill.
May
An amazing story came to light in May – after losing her job as a carer aged 64, Sarah* was referred to us by the DWP. She’d been struggling so much that she was relying on food banks to get by. Our support worker Dean took her through all the normal money checks, saving on things like energy bills and council tax. Those savings came to £1,906, which was a great result – but there was better to come. They uncovered two private pensions as well as an NHS one (Sarah was a nurse for 36 years). The first two were worth £1,500 and £2,000, but the NHS pension came in at £1,200 a month with a total lump sum of £80,000, backdated to her 60th birthday. Not a bad day at the office!
*name has been changed
June
Lloyds Banking Group joined forces with us for the Nobody In The Dark campaign, alongside Mastercard and the Good Things Foundation, to tackle digital and financial exclusion in the UK, building on our 2020 drive to help those left behind as Covid accelerated the move to digital. We also took Quids in! Readers Club to Scotland and hit circulation of 30,000 households. And our founder Jeff Mitchell (main photo) went down a storm at a Money Guiders network event on digital and financial inclusion.
July
The champagne corks were popping as we were named one of the UK’s top 100 social enterprises in a prestigious list honouring good practice in the sector. The SE100 Index, run by NatWest and Pioneers Post, rewarded organisations that displayed “social purpose and business savvy”, and our rapid growth and transformation during the pandemic impressed the judges. Not only that, but we extended our partnerships with more social landlords, reaching even more tenants in financial difficulties as landlords referred them into our money guidance service. Through the Quids in! Advisor Training, we also empowered frontline staff at housing associations with the knowledge and confidence to start conversations about money.
August
We kicked off what we hope will be a long-running and fruitful partnership with The Big Issue. Clean Slate workers trained Big Issue outreach staff to deliver the Future-Proof Finance Quiz to vendors of the magazine, as well as empowering them to support vendors towards digital and financial inclusion.
September
We handed the mic to our readers for our autumn edition of Quids in! The Hope issue focused on the stories of five readers and how they’d turned their financial fortunes around. They were all on a journey and still working towards the lives they wanted for themselves – hence the title, Hope. We also relaunched our incredibly helpful Universal Credit Guide.
October
We reopened our Quids in! Centres including at Poplar HARCA Community Centres in East London and other spaces in the South West and Gloucestershire, reaching into these communities and responding to their needs face to face again after a long absence. Also making the cut this month was barber to Stormzy and Anthony Joshua, Mark Maciver (AKA Slider Cuts), who backed the Nobody In The Dark campaign. He invited locals into his east London shop for a free haircut. and Quids in! workers were on hand to offer money advice and tips on how being online could help their finances.
November
In a first for us, we hosted an online event bringing together like-minded industry professionals to discuss the perfect storm hitting low-income households this winter. Surviving a Winter of Discontent: UC and the Lessons from the Frontline was a 90-minute discussion looking at the issue from the perspectives of social landlord Aster and anti-hunger organisation the Trussell Trust, digging deep into the realities of poverty in South Wales, and outlining our own take on the situation. The event was fully subscribed – so watch this space for similar events in future.
December
We rounded the year off with a focus on language and accessibility. Our websites are now aided by Recite Me, a service that opens up online content to everyone including those who have visual impairments or speak English as a second language. Another groundbreaking project for us was the publication of our English/Bengali Loan Shark magazine, which has been distributed to vulnerable tenants in East London. This is in addition to the Welsh-speaking staff we welcomed to the team earlier on in the year. And a nice way to round off the year – the winter Quids In! and our annual bespoke Northern Ireland Housing Executive tenants’ edition reached a combined 220,000 households.
Main image: Frankie Stone
