Citizens Advice's 'Financial Capability Pilot'

1. Description of the programme
2. The study
3. What are the outcomes?
4. Key findings
5. What are the costs?
6. Points to consider

Description of the programme

The Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) Financial Capability pilot aimed to improve the financial capability of people who may be excluded from mainstream financial services.

The programme involved a combination of face-to-face workshops and one-to-one sessions delivered directly to service users; and group training sessions for front-line workers from intermediary organisations focused on building the financial capability of their clients. It was hoped that both the service users and front-line workers trained would pass their learning on to friends and colleagues, thereby improving their financial capability and confidence in supporting others to develop theirs.

The front-line workers trained through this project represented a variety of organisations including credit unions, housing associations, other third sector organisations, education providers and statutory bodies including local authorities.

The workshops, one-to-one sessions and training were delivered by the equivalent of 7 full-time financial capability advisers across ten CAB in the Northeast and Yorkshire and Humberside.

The pilot ran from Autumn 2008 to Summer 2009 and was funded by a central government department (the then Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform). During this period 458 training events were delivered as part of the pilot to 1,083 service users, and 1,433 front-line workers from 111 different organisations (around 2,500 people in total).

The study

One independent impact evaluation of the programme conducted by Bob Widdowson Research and Consulting has been published. This study involved pre-and immediate post-training measurement with 716 front-line workers and 492 service users, and subsequent follow-up interviews with 20 front-line workers and 26 service users. The before and after intervention data is quite limited (as are the pre and post changes recorded). No comparison group was used.

What are the outcomes?

• Financial behaviour
• Financial capability (mindset)
• Other

Key findings

The evaluation (which involved pre- and post-programme questionnaires with workshop participants, a small-scale follow-up interview phase and analysis of programme data) found positive changes in relation to the following outcomes:

Outcomes for front-line workers

• Confidence to support clients: the proportion of front-line workers who said they felt very or fairly confident to support service users on financial issues increased from 48% before training to 94% directly afterwards.
• Almost all workers (95%) said they’d probably or definitely share the information they had gained with their colleagues.

Outcomes for service users

Financial behaviour:

• Directly after participating in the programme, when asked in the post-programme questionnaire to indicate what financial actions they were likely to take as a result of the training, over 90% of service users said they were intending to take one or more actions. The most commonly cited actions were setting up a budget, followed by claiming extra benefits, changing fuel supplier and changing how they borrow.
• Of those 26 service users who participated in the follow-up interviews, around half said they had gone on to take at least one action as a result of the training, and three-quarters said they would pass on the information they learned to family and friends.

Financial capability (Mindset):

• The proportion of service users who said they felt very or fairly confident in managing their finances increase from 60% before the training to 89% directly afterwards.

Based on an estimate made by the front-line workers involved in the training about how many service users they would be able to support using their new knowledge in the first three months following their training, the evaluators projected that the project would have knock-on beneficial effects for around 20,000 additional service users over the course of this three month period.

What are the costs?

Citizens Advice assessed the cost of delivering this project from Autumn 2008 to the end of May as £250,000. The figure comprises bureaux costs (£220,000) and central costs such as training and support (£30,000).

2,516 people were directly trained, equating to a total unit cost of under £100 per person. If the numbers directly trained are added to the numbers of service users projected to be supported by trained intermediaries – an additional 20,000 people were reached (a unit cost of £11 per person). The longer the programme ran the lower this unit cost would become.

Points to consider

• Meeting targets for delivering training to service users proved more difficult than expected. Key reasons cited included a reliance within the project on third parties to promote the training to them, the stigma around seeking debt and money advice, and insufficient time to effectively connect and engage with vulnerable groups and those not currently connected to other services.
• Recommendations made for overcoming this included working with the engaged service users to identify methods for reaching out to other members of their communities; using terms other than ‘education’ and ‘training’ which imply people might need help; and offering more one-to-one sessions for those who are reluctant to discuss money in a group setting. Training materials should be adapted for specific groups (such as those with learning disabilities or people with poor literacy and numeracy skills) to reflect their ability and needs.
• The use of skilled trainers experienced in debt and financial capability work was a key success factor for the programme.
• Care should be taken when interpreting the findings from the follow-up phase due to the very small sample sizes involved.

Full report

Citizens Advice's 'Financial Capability Pilot' - full report