As Clean Slate marks its 20th anniversary, we could have chosen to look back and simply celebrate two decades of work. There is plenty to be proud of. But this moment feels less like an ending to an era than a fork in the road: Which is the best direction from here? How do the people and places still feeling left behind need us to step up for them now?
That is why our anniversary webinar, Project Reconnect, will focus on one of the most urgent questions facing communities today. In addition to tackling poverty, how do we address an immediate challenge – the widening divisions in our least affluent neighbourhoods? At Clean Slate, we believe part of the answer lies in reconnecting people… to the services on offer to them, to the opportunities available around them, and to each other.
It would be easy to assume that people in hardship feel cut off because there are simply not enough services or opportunities. And often, they will tell us exactly that. They may also fear that whatever help exists will be offered to someone else first; people ‘not like them’, from somewhere else, with louder voices, fewer barriers, or favoured by other people not like them who make decisions on these things.
But Clean Slate’s research, listening directly to people experiencing hardship, points to something even deeper. People do feel stigmatised by complex and dehumanising systems, by processes that show little compassion, and sometimes by intolerance from other users of the same services. Yet what they often feel most aggrieved by is more basic. They say no-one ever tells them what is going on.
When I spoke to one client who completed our peer support training programme, Ele-Ments, she told me how difficult it was for her to find support after leaving rehab. “I felt very, very much in the dark because there wasn’t really any guidance or anybody out there. It was a real shock and I just didn’t know where to turn.”
Information is power. When people do not know what support exists, where to go, who to trust, or what the next step is, exclusion quickly becomes mistrust. Services can begin to feel like closed doors. Opportunities can look as though they were designed for somebody else. And over time, people who already feel unseen can retreat further from the help that might make a difference. This leaves people vulnerable to divisive whispers that turn frustration away from the causes of their hardship, and redirects it towards other people struggling just as much.
Project Reconnect is not about presenting Clean Slate as the hero of the past two decades. It is about sharing what we have learned as one organisation trying, imperfectly but persistently, to bring people with us. That means demonstrating empathy and understanding. It means communicating using tools people will read, watch or engage with. It means valuing those we aim to support as a big part of the solution to disadvantage, not as the problem itself.
Some of the answer lies in our pledge to hard-pressed communities, which is simply: We see you. We hear you. We are you.
We see you, because we set out to fill the gaps that emerge when too many people are invisible to services, institutions and policy-makers. We hear you, because active listening is not an optional extra; it is the starting point for engagement that puts people in the driving seat as they try to escape financial hardship. And we are you, because we train and hire former participants whose lived experience helps us overcome barriers that no leaflet, website or referral pathway can solve on its own. These blockers include language, trust and the deeply held scepticism that says, ‘you’re not people like me’.
Zara, one of our Quids in! Coaches, explains it better, recalling her time using our services. Becci, her Clean Slate support worker, helped her without judgement, giving guidance while leaving her in control. Now Zara takes that same approach into her own work with clients.
“At the front of my mind, I remember I’ve been in their shoes… I’m here to guide you in terms of money and give you the answers, but you’re in control. And that’s how Becci treated me, and that’s how I treat my clients as well.”
After 20 years, my experience has proven time and again that reconnection happens one bridge at a time. Sometimes that link is a conversation, almost always starting with ‘how can we put money in your pocket?’. Sometimes it is a warm introduction. Sometimes it is someone with lived experience saying, ‘I understand. I’ve been there too.’
When those bridges are built, people are not only reconnected with services. They rejoin with possibility, with confidence, with their futures. They regain a sense of control over their money and their lives.
In our last webinar that over 150 people signed up to was called Changing the Conversation. Now we want to have that chat. Project Reconnect will ask: How can communities, charities, services and policy-makers move beyond managing hardship and start rebuilding trust. Because if division grows when people feel ignored, reconnection begins when we make sure they are seen, heard and genuinely included in shaping the way forward.
And when people are reconnected, they start to feel a sense of control over their own lives.
Join us for Project Reconnect as we explore what twenty years of listening, learning and working alongside communities has taught us about rebuilding connections, restoring trust and creating pathways out of hardship. Sign up here.
Image: Andres Victorero/Getty Images