Rainbow Centre celebrates one year supporting community with Money Matters

In its first year as a partnership project between the Rainbow Centre / Citizen Advice, Money Matters Folkestone saw a steady rise in clients and now operates a waiting list, demonstrating how crucial the service is.

The debt support service for the Folkstone community had begun in 2018 as a pilot run by The Rotary Club of Folkestone, Citizens Advice and Kent Coast Volunteering. Since January 2021 it has been a partnership project between Rainbow Centre and Citizens Advice.

The Rainbow Centre was the ideal partner for the service having already established itself as a point of contact and support for people in Folkestone with difficulties such as food poverty, and homelessness. Debt is often both a driver and a consequence for many of these issues, so it made sense for the Rainbow Centre, alongside Citizens Advice who provide a money advisor, to deliver this service.

Mary Stredwick, CEO of The Rainbow Centre, said: “We are seeing more and more people in hardship and food poverty, some of which has been compounded by the COVID pandemic. In 2021, the service assisted 48 clients compared to 32 in 2020, although the figures for 2020 were affected by the lockdown when face-to-face meetings were not so readily available. In addition, debt recovery and landlord evictions had been suspended. Then in 2021 we began to see a rise in demand for the service as rent evictions came to an end, as well as the £20 upliftment.”

Mary continues: “Money Matters is a lifeline for people in difficulty. It came along just in time, at a time when we needed to ensure services were joined up and issues can be addressed in one place under one roof. It doesn’t matter which service individuals enter, we will make sure they get the help they need – that might be supporting individuals to access food, manage their debt, helping them to find affordable accommodation or working with other specialist agencies to get them back into work.  We are indeed privileged to ‘walk the extra mile’ alongside our clients as they recover from debt.”

Sue Day, CEO of the Citizens Advice, commented: “Citizens Advice has a history of working with the Rainbow Centre as both organisations provide advice and assistance to people in poverty with housing issues. Working together on this project has cemented our working relationship further and means that we can work together to tackle some of the root causes of debt and poverty issues with the Rainbow Centre providing practical support and our service providing Money Advice. This enhances the service offer from both our services and, more importantly, maximises our ability to gain positive outcomes for the clients.”

See more about the project on the Rainbow Centre project page.