Home

Q: What is Money Clinic all about?

What is the problem?

• You are under pressure from your culture. Pressures which are new and you are not trained to cope with. But hopefully you are in community.
• Your neighbour out there is also under pressure, but many do not have the support you do.
• Many people have a basic lack of training and ability to deal with money.
• The Money Clinic is our response to this situation.
  
  Our developing team
• The vision began to develop in Feb 2007 at the time of a teaching series on money.
• It was then researched, became a proposal, and was approved in November 2007.
• It already has clients, so far on an informal basis from within the church.
  One person is training as a Citizens Advice Bureau adviser, which helps us to learn about the key issues, about how to manage an advice service, and to train our own team.
• We are partnering with both Christians against Poverty (CAP) and Stewardship for training and resources.
• Since January 2008, we have a team, most of whom want to train to become advisers, and a few others who want training for their own use.
• We have two small groups who want to act as hubs, first to work on their own money management, but then to take the training more widely - a bit like Alpha.
• Several of the team are also taking counselling training in April.
• The majority of the training will be complete by mid-June, and then we will plan, publicise and launch the service more formally.
• Interested in being part of the team? Contact Neil Duguid or Rupert Ward.
  
  What areas are we working in?
• Education and prevention. One resource we will be using is CAP Money - a 3 week DVD- based course in an informal group setting.
• Personal budget coaching - Most of us can be trained in the skills to do this. Indeed, we ought to be able to do it for ourselves, families, and children!
• Help with debt, where the client can be brought round without specialist help - personal support plus a good grounding in how to manage money in future can be the most important factors.
• More in-depth debt recovery, where the client can't pay priority debts or has such a big debt that it cannot realistically be turned round. We will have referral arrangements with several free specialist agencies.
  
  

Last updated 26 February 2008