supportive

Celebrating the diversity of the City’s communities often means offering services to groups who are not politically popular or highly valued by the host community. Two of our most successful projects recently have involved working with asylum seekers and gypsies and travellers.

Both of these groups experience high levels of prejudice and unpopularity but, nonetheless, have very pressing, very real, and very significant advice needs. We have very quickly become one of the leading advice agencies working with these groups.

Anti-poverty work remains the main defining characteristic of Stoke CAB. Poverty remains the most important fact of life for many people living in Stoke-on-Trent.

Four out of every ten enquirers need help to claim benefits or appeal against refusal of benefit. Increasingly, this work centres on sickness and disability benefits received by some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.

Over one third of all our work is helping resolve multiple debt problems - many people experiencing debt do so as a result of their poverty. Major tasks for our debt advisers are to free up cash to pay for essentials:

• food, housing, heat & light
• negotiate affordable payments

We represent several hundred enquirers in the County Court each year, who face the loss of their home. This figure does not include the many hundreds of people for whom we have negotiated repayments with their landlord or mortgage lender, and prevented the matter going to court.

The loss of their home remains one of the most frequent crises facing our enquirers.