Who are we?
Citizens Advice Havant is a free service offering confidential, independent, impartial advice to people who live/work in Havant borough which has high levels of deprivation. Our Work Out Your Money project is a well-established and proactive Citizens Advice Havant initiative, recently extended, to span the whole of Hampshire and its 1.4 million population. We are passionate about improving financial literacy within our community. Our team of qualified teachers and advisers, supported by volunteers, deliver money workshops to schools and the community.
What's our project about?
For anyone born in the UK between 1/9/2002 and 2/1/2011 there will be a long-term savings account called a Child Trust Fund (CTF) in their name. We want to ensure that these young people know about CTFs and where theirs is.
Six million children born in the UK between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011 qualified for a CTF. However, since 2020, when the first CTFs matured, an estimated 1 million people have not claimed their funds. As Ambassadors for The Share Foundation, our project aims to connect young adults with these savings accounts. Fiona Ross our Project Lead for Schools, states that "In every setting that we are in, there is always someone who doesn't know where their Child Trust Fund is." 17-year-old Roman was one of those but has since been connected with his savings. Check his story out on https://www.itv.com/watch/tonight/1a2803/1a9757a0145 (17:40-19:50).
We’ve combined finding CTFs within our financial education sessions as we know the opportunities these funds offer young people, such as better financial well-being, training, and career opportunities.
What do we want to do?
We want to further our work with young people in schools and the community across Hampshire delivering financial education. These funds will enable us to deliver more sessions and use other avenues to find these young people, guide them through the process of reuniting them with their account, and most importantly, provide them with the knowledge and confidence to consider the options to save and invest it for their future.
Want to know more?
Watch Fiona Ross, our project lead, present at the recent Sharefound Unclaimed Adult-owned CTF Conference at Westminster on 5 March 2024.
https://youtu.be/XCbDptyC4-k