Faith

Specialists at CAP HQ support local workers

"I think the thing that's coming through now is that people who, let' s say six to 12 months ago were just OK financially though on a bit of a knife edge, with the recent fuel and food price increases these people have now been tipped over the edge. Actually what we find is actually a snowball effect so they get into debt, for example not paying back the credit card bill, and that has a knock-on effect on all the other areas of finance within their lives." In his role as PR Officer for Christians Against Poverty (CAP) Jon Priestley is in daily contact with the charity's 72 centres across the country and the impression he's got is that more people seem to be slipping into debt.

Fuel increases may help push people into debt...

CAP Operations Director, Kathryn Foster, says the statistics she sees are suggesting that more people are now getting into debt. She agrees with Jon that recent price rises are playing their part: "It's what hits our clients. We all know when you go to the supermarket for pasta it's twice as much as it was not long ago. Eggs, butter, it's all more expensive. I guess I'm talking about detail but that's what is hitting our families." She also points out that those who may be on special diets for health reasons will be hit even harder. 

Today, walking around CAP's headquarters at Jubilee Mill (a former box-making factory) in Bradford's Little Germany, it's surprising to be told that the charity began just 12 years ago in a spare room in founder John Kirkby's Bradford house. John, a committed Christian, had personal experience both of getting into debt and finding a way out of it.

Kathryn explains: "We seek to help anyone who approaches us for help to get out of debt and we do all our helping through churches. They form a local network of support centres."

Jon and Kathryn

People may be referred to these local centres by GPs, housing and other agencies and they do not have to be Christians to take advantage of CAP's services. Jon says: "The majority of people we work with are actually not Christian. I think there has been concern in the past that people see the name and think we only work with Christians but actually our mandate is to work with people of all faiths."

Kathryn points out that debt comes in many forms and almost always brings other problems with it: "Obviously debt can vary. Anything from only £1000 - but some people can't cope with that - up to £150,000. Typically the average amount is around £9000 or £10,000 in terms of secondary debt - credit cards, store cards, overdrafts and the like - but coupled with that are social problems or relationship problems or health problems so the money problem itself, I would say, virtually never stands alone. There are other issues..."

This is why CAP seeks to help by providing local support: "We try to say that our service is very holistic and that there's a lot of hand holding (if you like) that goes along with it. This is the very reason we actually deliver our service via a centre manager in a church in a community. That church has a lot more to offer than just an answer for someone's finances - a lot of our churches will have other groups or organisations or helplines and a wider social action remit that can actually help, whether that be food banks or furniture recycling or pregnancy advice. You name it, a wide remit of social needs are covered in that way."

CAP's HQ in Bradford's Little Germany

But surely the task of helping people who are trapped by debt must be daunting? Kathryn is confident CAP can cope with the challenge: "What we do is very tried and tested. We've helped over 16,000 people in the past but the fact that we are tried and tested means we can always say hand on heart that we have a solution for anybody regardless of how severe their debt is. And our on-the-ground people, while they might not have the answer, obviously have got support from our head office here."

Although CAP is there to offer financial advice and hopefully get people out of debt, it's not a bank or a credit union and doesn't lend money or pay off people's debts for them. Instead Kathryn says: "We are helping someone to refocus on what they've actually got coming in and what they need to live off, seeing what's spare and to actually use that to pay their debts back. If that's not enough within a reasonable timeframe, obviously that's when we look at insolvency options."

Jon adds: "I think what we are trying to do is to provide a long term solution for debt so whereas some organisations might just want to focus on paying everything off as quickly as possible, what we want to do is to re-educate people about how to handle their own finances, basically how to be good stewards of our money. While we state we want our clients to be debt-free within five years, within that five year period what we want to do is enable them to put good financial principles into practice so it gives longevity to what we do instead of it just being a symptomatic approach."

CAP's clients are being hit by the housing market!

But the 'credit crunch' does mean that things may now be getting more difficult for CAP's clients. Kathryn says: "Because house prices are dropping the equity is either very little on someone's house or they are starting to fall into negative equity, and I'm only just starting to see that...Where for someone it might have been, 'You need to sell your home and pay off your debts and have a fresh start', unfortunately for a lot of people now there isn't enough equity in their home to make a fresh start." In addition houses are not selling: "That's an issue. It's kind of these everyday real things that are hitting our clients."

Kathryn emphasises that not all debt is the result of bad choices or extravagant lifestyles: "In fact last year we looked at a smallish sample of clients and what we found was that in nearly every case, the reason for them coming to us for help was that something had happened to their family situation that had tipped them over the edge. Yes, they had borrowed but the borrowing was manageable and yet there would be a redundancy or an accident or a child who was in hospital or a parent who had to give up work to care for a child, but it was often things like that, or a relationship breakdown, that really tipped people over the edge and very often with a consequence that could happen to anybody at any point. I think that's very important to remember in terms of dealing with people who are in debt. We don't make any judgement about them because it's a potential for all of us."

[To contact your nearest Christians Against Poverty local centre 'phone 08003280006]