Help Through Crisis with Norfolk Citizens Advice

Aim

To provide in-depth, expert advice and support to local people facing crisis in Kings Lynn, Great Yarmouth and Norwich.

About Us:

We're an independent charity and part of the Citizens Advice network across England and Wales. People come to us with all sorts of issues. You may have money, benefit, housing or employment problems. You may be facing a crisis, or just considering your options.

We provide free, confidential, accredited and impartial advice, campaigning on big issues affecting people's lives.

Our goal is to help everyone find a way forward, whatever problem they face. We value diversity, promote equality and challenge discrimination wherever we see it. We improve people’s lives, support local communities and enhance the Norfolk economy.

About our Project:

Our project aims to help 2,200 people across Norfolk to address crisis in their lives and radically improve their wellbeing.  Can you help us achieve this?

Led by Norfolk Citizens Advice, the project includes partner agencies offering specialist advice in the crisis areas of debt, welfare benefits, housing, mental health, drug and alcohol issues, domestic abuse, disability and immigration. Practical solutions and expertise provided by local social landlords and foodbanks complete the partnership. 

Advice Champions based in King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth and Norwich, as well as in the surrounding communities, manage the client’s immediate crisis needs by helping them navigate around the specialist agencies and support them to build resilience and plan for the future. We have seen a 1400% increase in demand for charitable support to address the cost of living crisis in the last year alone.

The core principle of the project is to provide structured support to those individuals in or entering crisis by creating personal plans that offer structured and staged help from multiple partners. Support includes advice, training, bursaries, vouchers and some highly specialist support from NCAN service providers.

We regularly support clients facing eviction and homelessness; work for and with clients with disabilities and long-term health conditions; provide support for the wider family members and consider the environment of the client and dependents and carers. While we clearly see the increase in demand caused by the pandemic, we have always focused on the wider determinants of health and wellbeing and the importance in addressing such factors as a way of improving quality of life and avoiding decline in crisis and reliance on clinical services.

What we expect to see and how the funding will help:

• Reductions in health inequalities via improved routes to health services and the opportunity for joint client sessions between bid partners and health providers
• Improved mental health and wellbeing, particularly in children, young people and older people via the specialist referral routes
• Increased awareness of the importance of behaviour change in physical and mental wellbeing
• Increase in income gain for clients (Citizens Advice collected services averaged £880 per client since April 2020)

These are the ‘causes of causes’ of poor wellbeing. The project not only allows for support to key risk factors related to poverty and low social status but also builds self-esteem, social support and self-empowerment. We found that making multi-issue improvement in clients’ lives in this way led to a related improvement in their mental and physical health scores.

When we previously ran this project, we achieved lots of positive outcomes which included improvements in all issue areas, including 84% improvement in debt management and 98% improvement in emotional and mental health. At least 62% expressed increased long-term resilience as a result of the project work. 

Previous client feedback on the success of the project and how it helped to dramatically improve their life “So I don’t know how I can thank you for this. Today I feel like I have won the euro millions because I [don’t] have any debt… Thank you so much for all your help. My daughter asked me why I’m crying and I only say because I’m so grateful to someone, and this one it’s you.”

This project successfully funded on 13th December 2022