Introducing the new approach towards financial capability resources September 2015

The Citizens Advice financial capability resources are located on the Citizens Advice website, as part of the overall education resources. They are intermingled with consumer education materials, and many of them have the Skilled to Go branding that they inherited from the Office of Fair Trading. These materials – along with some internally facing materials on CABlink – comprised a total library of 53 resources. Some were smaller individual activities, others were longer session plans. These resources were accessed by members who had submitted their details for the free registration. There were over 1,500 members, many from the regional financial capability forums across England and Wales. Our previous resources

The evolving direction of the One service strategy: Increasingly financial capability is integrated into the advice we give. A more flexible approach has shown a need for smaller, bite-size activities. Greater scope for autonomy and innovation from the individual local offices. The need to evolve our approach Rather than trying to drum up interest in 60-minute financial capability sessions, many local offices found that they wanted support to make financial capability relevant to clients within the context of their own lives. Often, this meant doing smaller activities, and picking individual resources that suited a client rather than a generic ‘off-the shelf’ session pack.

The new financial capability resources were developed to address the evolving needs of the service, whilst building on the previous strengths of our resources. The previous 53 resources have been wholly deconstructed, and revamped. Everything has been rebranded, reformatted, and reorganised. In addition, entire new areas of financial capability are now being covered. There are now 153 new resources in total, which are themselves organised into 26 individual session packs. There are also 8 pre-packaged toolkits of resources available (with more pending), that share the materials used in recent and innovative models of integrated financial capability across the network. There is a section on supporting resources, including best-practice guides and glossaries. This section includes online interactive materials designed to complement more complex activities, and generic presentations – just like this one – for local offices to use when introducing new models, materials and approaches. The new resources

The new financial capability resources are already arranged into session packs; these are ranked in terms of complexity, and occasionally in terms of whether or not a high level of numeracy is required. However, for those advisers that want to take advantage of the more flexible structure of the new resources, they can download every single individual activity themselves. Whereas session packs are split into trainer notes and client handouts, individual activities are self- contained for ease of use. Example – You have only have thirty minutes to do some financial capability with a client who need some help understanding payslips and saving money on their energy bills. The topic area jobs and employment contains a payslip exercise which can be downloaded in isolation. Next, the topic area energy and water contains a few activities on saving on energy costs. An advisor can browse through and pick what they choose, all in less than a minute. Practical use

If you prefer using pre-packaged sessions – or are able to offer lengthier sustained sessions to clients – the resources are arranged in session packs for ease of use. These are split into the trainers notes and client Handouts, and are designed to be easily adaptable for both one-to-one and group sessions. However, these sessions no longer have lesson plans in the normal fashion. Rather than imposing a fixed times and sequences of activities, we are allowing advisers to gauge what activities can be skipped if necessary, and which ones are most important in any given session. Green sessions are essential, amber are optional, red are non- essential. The size of the session circle indicates how long the activity takes in relative terms. A new type of lesson plan

The older resources will still be available on the Citizens Advice website, in the exact same place as before. However, as the website continues to be updated, these resources will need to be phased out by 2016; this will take place at the same time as a similar re- development of Citizens Advice consumer education resources, meaning that all the older intermingled resources will be replaced with ones that better reflect the growing needs of the One service. What happens next? The new resources are an evolving, growing library. We will take feedback on board constantly to help develop and grow the resources. A new evaluation model – still in development – will be slotted into the resource library. An ongoing project is mapping them to the Adult Financial Capability Framework. All members are welcome to submit their own resources for consideration for inclusion.

For any further information or feedback, contact us at

Christy McAleese Team manager David Mahon Forums / training & resources Hannah Luck Forums / communication & information The Financial Skills for Life team Also… Basam Diablos Financial capability development consultant