Josh MacAlister’s Case for Change is right to argue that too many children don’t get the help they need before their problems turn into crises. Yet everyone agrees that early intervention is better than late intervention. In practice, we’re still waiting for children to suffer harm before giving them the help they need. To change that, the Care Review needs to get it right on early help.
This blog was published first at Action for Children.
Children’s social care is important
Growing up, more than one in seven children spend some time categorised as ‘in need’ — a legal status…
Our data shows how people in debt are struggling to make ends meet
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, 40% of the people Citizens Advice have helped with debt have had a negative budget — meaning their income doesn’t cover basic living costs. That’s up from 37% last year.
The financial impact of coronavirus on the people we help with debt is unsurprising. 6 million people have fallen behind on bills due to coronavirus and a wide range of data sources show that people who were financially insecure before the crisis have been the hardest hit by the pandemic.
From providing in-depth debt advice online and over the phone through the crisis…
These innovative services need to work for everyone
Every year, customers who are loyal to their essential service providers lose over £900 — effectively a ‘loyalty penalty’. Last year we made a super complaint — our first in 7 years — to help put an end to that.
The competition regulator, The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has now set out how they think the penalty can be ended — including introducing price caps and giving regulators more power.
But we want to know whether digital tools could also be part of the answer — so we’re working with local…
Only independent regulation will clean up the industry
We helped 41,000 people last year who were struggling with problems caused by bailiffs. As part of the Taking Control campaign we’re calling on the government to introduce independent regulation of the sector. Here are 4 things they need to do.
1. Recognise the damage caused by bad bailiff debt collection
The problems caused by bailiffs aren’t new. We’ve called for tougher regulation of bailiffs since at least 2006. Today, we submitted evidence to the government which shows the scale of the problem.
Bailiffs collect debt from people who are in financial difficulty and often face other vulnerabilities. 2 in 5 of the people we helped last year had a…
We want the government to measure the level of household bill debt
In 2017–18, we helped over 600,000 people with debt problems relating to household bills, such as council tax, water and electricity. That’s nearly double the number of problems we supported people with when compared to credit debts, such as credit cards and overdrafts.
Despite that, household bill debts get far less attention from policy makers than consumer credit. That’s partly because we know less about the level of household bill debt. No single organisation or government department has the responsibility for measuring the level of debt on household bills. We want to change that.
Today, for the first time, we’ve…
We’re calling on the government to protect people facing financial insecurity and cap the cost of high-cost credit
Last week we published research that highlighted the widespread problem of financial insecurity. We found 9 out of 10 people we help with their debts have had a recent change in their circumstances — such as getting ill or losing their job. When people are financially insecure these changes can push them into crisis.
Today, we’re using our evidence at the Treasury Select Committee enquiry into household finances. We’re asking MPs to call on the government to help people build more secure lives.
Financial insecurity is an old problem with a new face
The decade since the financial crisis has presented a mixed picture for UK household finances. On the…
Research published by the IFS today is a useful addition to the policy discussion about what to do about high levels of consumer debt. Crucially, it highlights that people get into financial difficulty for a number of reasons.
Forget about the £200 billion
The report makes the important observation that focussing on the total level of debt is misleading, or at least not that useful. It’s like looking at the whether footballers are overpaid by averaging the pay packets of all footballers across the 8 million or so people who play football each week.
The real insight is found by…
There’s only so many ways to say household debt is a problem
Unaffordable household debt is a growing problem. Since the start of the summer, new statistics are published almost weekly — showing how quickly debt is growing, who is struggling with their debts, and how financially insecure people are.
The Bank of England were one of the first to sound the alarm, saying the rapid growth of household debt was a sign of ‘complacency’. The Guardian spent a week digging into Britain’s ‘debt time bomb’, on why young people were more likely to be overindebted, the growth of car finance, and how people fall into a debt spiral.
You get a…
Citizens Advice research shows 800,000 people have struggled with debt since the financial crisis
Citizens Advice helped a couple in the Midlands who had a monthly income of £2,300 but had managed to borrow over £250,000. The couple owned a house with a mortgage of £90,000 and had other debts totalling nearly £90,000 — but at that point they were managing. Despite those debts, they remortgaged their house — increasing the amount owed on their home by £60,000 to £150,000, and were given an £11,000 loan on the side. The increase in their debts of more than £70,000 pushed them over the edge.
That lending and borrowing is clearly excessive — but it’s just…
Book review — The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty
Political and media attention on the increasingly precarious nature of work has been fuelled by the high profile, often controversial, growth of the ‘gig economy’. Insecurity, however, runs deeper than recent changes to the labour market. For many people, it is the volatility caused by the predictable challenges of everyday life, as well as the lack of a reliable paycheck, that makes it difficult to make ends meet.
In the twentieth century, researchers like Michael Harrington exposed the extent of extreme poverty in the US. In turn, they helped to build the intellectual foundations for policies that aimed to combat…
Joe Lane
Policy, politics, and economics. Former history teacher.
