Challenging poverty and improving lives

We’re getting behind Challenge Poverty Week 17-23 October and highlighting our work with our partners including Oldham Council to help tackle and prevent and poverty here in our borough.

Our specialist teams can help you make the most of your money, support you to pay your rent and charges, assist you to find your next opportunity if you’re looking for work and give advice to move your career forward if you’re in employment.

These are just some of the ways our teams have worked with customers in the past six months.

Our Community Impact team has…

• Proactively contacted 267 customers to ask if they need any support
• Helped more than 400 customers with advice to make the most of their money and access other support services
• Supported customers who live in FCHO homes to reduce their debt by an average of £876 per customer
• Secured more than £250k in one off financial-gains for customers (including unclaimed benefits and debts cleared)
• Helped customers collectively save more than £180k by accessing our affordable food service with The Bread and Butter Thing

Our rents team has …

• Made 4,279 phone calls to customers and taken 5,243 calls from customers, all to provide tailored support to help customers manage their rent and charges
• Secured 111 Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) for customers to help with their rent costs
• Made 488 referrals to further support for our customers

Our Directions employment team has…

• Helped 92 people into employment, putting an average extra £256 into their pockets every month - above and beyond what they were receiving from benefits, prior to starting work.

Lorraine Black, our Head of Community Services, said:

“We know the rising cost of living is leaving some people finding it hard to cope and our teams are on hand if you are struggling to manage day-to-day costs or facing other financial worries. We can provide advice and assistance and also signpost you to other local organisations to make sure you get the help you need.

“We’ve seen increased demand for our services in the past six months and we want to do all we can to support our customers this winter.

“If you would benefit from support from our dedicated teams, please reach out to us.”

Call 0161 393 7117 or email servicecentre@fcho.co.uk.