Delivering money advice – are we
getting it right?
Pat Sproul
Money Advice Senior
The Highland Council
The stakes
Debt has a profound effect on the
individual; both on psychological and
physical health. It leads to guilt, low
self-esteem and depression, which in
turn leads to an inability to cope with
other life stressors.
A Highland GP
Aims of workshop
To enable attendees to:
• put the client’s needs at the heart of money
advice and amend policies and practice
accordingly
• understand why having a robust procedural
framework supports:
• high quality advice provision and
• efficient and effective money advice delivery
Delivering Money Advice
Delivery must be:
• supported by a robust infrastructure of policies,
procedures and systems
• tailored to external conditions e.g. The Highland
Council team delivers money advice to a mix of
supersparse and urban households – across an
area the size of Belgium
• efficient
• ‘fit for purpose’ - meeting the actual needs of
clients and not the perceived needs
Delivering Money Advice
The Highland Council:
• serves a third of the land area of Scotland –
including the most remote and sparsely populated
parts of the UK
• has the seventh highest population of the 32
authorities in Scotland.
• The total land area including all islands at low
water is 26,484 square kilometres.
• This is 33% of Scotland and 11.4% of Great Britain.
• It is 10 times larger than Luxembourg, 20% larger
than Wales, and nearly the size of Belgium.
Delivering Money Advice
The Highland Council Money Advice team:
• 12 team members located in 5 offices in the
Highlands
• Virtual team using networked systems to ensure
consistency of service delivery
• Scottish National Standards accredited
• 3 team members funded by the Scottish Legal Aid
Board funding stream ‘Making Advice Work’
• Relies on IT to support service provision
Delivering Money Advice
Scottish National Standards for Information &
Advice Providers
Standard 2.4
All services must produce an annual service plan
that seeks to ensure the best match between the
needs of service users and the resources available
to provide the service.
Delivering Money Advice
• The HC Money Advice team produces a Business
Plan each year and this takes into account,
amongst other factors, the changing
environment
• Due to the geography of the area, most of the HC
Money Advice first interviews are made by phone
and this works well in many cases
• In the last couple of years however, the team has
moved back from telephone 1st contacts where
clients are at risk of eviction and piloted ‘on tap’ ,
intensive money advice, linked to Housing pre
court or pre eviction interviews for high rent
arrears cases
Delivering Money Advice
• This pilot for face to face interviews for certain
client groups gave rise to The Highland Council
Money Advice team’s successful bid to the
Scottish Legal Aid Board ‘Making Advice Work’
funding stream
• The HC project, ‘Reaching the Unreached’ uses
texts as one of the main ‘channels’ when
delivering money advice to these clients
Delivering Money Advice
Standard 4.5
Type II and Type III services must have a casework
procedure that can be applied consistently to all
service users.
• The ‘Reaching the Unreached’ project required
new procedures to be created, given that there
were some differences of approach
• The procedures are growing and being amended
as we learn from the new initiative
New age?
Money advice has always faced changes e.g.
legislative changes, financial pressures, but things
are moving quickly now and the sector has to keep
up.
Today, we are going to look at some upcoming
challenges and discuss how your organisation is
changing, or not, to meet the client’s needs
OVER TO YOU……..