Elements - Empowering lived experience in Bristol

Aim

Our Elements program empowers people from hardship, through paid work placements, coaching and training, to support people in hardship.

Clean Slate is a social enterprise that helps people in hardship by providing comprehensive money skills training and support for those on low incomes who want to be more than just better off. We are complemented by Quids in!, our money guidance initiative, which offers a range of in-person and online services as well as digital resources. 

     At Clean Slate, we made a promise to people on low incomes: 

                               We see you. We hear you. We are you.

Our lived experience services are at the heart of our promise, having provided Peer Placements for more than ten years. Today, 75% of our staff are former Peers! They have accessed our service for financial inclusion support, completed our Elements Peer Worker Programme, and are now helping others along that same journey.  

What is a Peer?

A Peer is someone who uses their own experience of hardship (this may be poverty,  poor mental health, physical health conditions, involvement in the criminal justice system, experience around homelessness, substance use disorder,  etc) to help others facing similar challenges. At Clean Slate, our peers draw on their own challenges with financial literacy, digital skills, mental health, and employment to connect with others and offer meaningful money guidance 

What is Elements?

Our Elements programme is a paid 12 week work placement, training participants to become a Quids in! support workers at one of our local drop-ins.  Our drop ins are based in community settings and offer light touch support to residents seeking money guidance, employment support, and help getting online. 

Each peer has the opportunity to shadow and learn how to deliver support and guidance to people in hardship alongside one of our fantastic and well experienced outreach workers. The placements are designed to fit in around other commitments. The role last three months with 3.5 paid hours per week. 

What do Peers do during a placement?

Our Peers are involved in many different roles, depending on their own experience. Some examples of the work include -

• Supporting our Outreach worker to run local drop-in services
• Supporting Outreach worker with their daily tasks
• Welcoming and signing up new clients
• Triaging clients (This is about working out the best type of support for someone)
• Supporting Tutors with workshops and events
• Going to events with staff to promote the service

Every Peer Worker is guided through relevant training . This is carefully planned to make sure it is manageable around other commitments. Whilst some of the training is mandatory to ensure all Peers are given the right tools to successfully find work some are optional. 

Here is a selection of the training included:

• Peer Worker Mental Health training
• Professional Framework training (where otherwise somewhat dry and lengthy policies and procedures are being brought to live with engaging videos and quizzes)
• 1:2:1 Coaching sessions to explore ambitions, explore opportunities and create an action plan to get where they want to get to
• IAG Level 2 Qualification
• Safeguarding training
• CV writing skills
• Interview and presentation skills
• IT skills

After the programme, our Peers will have many new skills and  often feed back how proud they feel and how far they've come.

 £10,000 would enable us to keep our Peer Worker Program running across Bristol and Bath. It would allows to offer 4 placements to people with lived experience of hardship, train them and have them join our (or someone else's) team 

Raising the funds would also allow us to keep the drop ins across Bristol and Bath running  offering vital guidance and support to the communities we serve around financial wellbeing, digital inclusion and employability.  

So the benefits of our Elements Program cover not only Peers but the entire community around them! It's such a win win! 

This project successfully funded on 3rd July 2025