Citizens Advice Newham Cost of Living Crisis Project

Citizens Advice Newham, will address all the local priorities for Canning Town and Custom House which include: Health & Wellbeing, Inclusive Economy and Youth Empowerment.

Over 60% of the clients we work with have a long term health condition, mental health issues or disability. When dealing with financial worries, especially with the current cost of living crisis, stress can impact and exacerbate poor health and affect wellbeing. Our service is largely reliant on volunteers, we encourage recruitment of local residents to provide training and learning for paid employment or better opportunities. This also feeds into empowering the youth to make a difference to the local community. However we also indirectly feed into youth empowerment by working with families to help ease their issues, to enable them to focus on opportunities towards youth empowerment, which they may be limited to when dealing with financial worries and other problems.

We currently do not have a core advice service available for Newham residents so are proposing to offer a 1-day service for 12 months. The project will operate on a referral basis from councillors to enable better partnership working and create another pathway to access advice where appointments are prioritised for vulnerable clients needing urgent support. This project will specifically focus on those who are struggling with the impacts of the cost-of-living increase, prioritising those who are vulnerable and require urgent support quickly. More people are struggling to pay their energy bills, falling into debt and need more financial support and help with basic household essentials. 

As we provide holistic advice, we can additionally provide generalist and specialist advice in welfare benefits, debts, energy, employment and make internal referrals as required, highlighting our added value.

This project will act as an additional resource and gateway to managing the growing need in the borough for legal advice as experienced by our organisation and other partners within the Newham advice partnership who we have also been supporting. Our previous research and client feedback has indicated that through our advice and support we contribute to better health and wellbeing outcomes. 

We can carry out complex casework where needed and working collaboratively with councillors will help improve community wellbeing. As we are based in the Canning Town and Custom house ward, we would like to trial this project in this area first and then expand into the borough. However if the need arises, we are flexible and can quickly expand on our reach and replicate service delivery given resources permit and adequate funds are available.

We want to ensure that residents are not alone when dealing with their problems and help them find a way forward.