1. Falkirk’s Fairer Money Week
Kenny Bowie, Community Advice Team,
Falkirk Council

2. Towards a Fairer Falkirk
Falkirk Council’s Poverty Strategy – Theme’s
Fairer Money
Fairer Access
Fairer Culture
A fairer and more equal Falkirk was agreed in August 2017 as one of the outcomes of the Falkirk Council Corporate Plan The plan sets out the Council’s vision for Falkirk and priorities, against the backdrop of a shrinking public budget.
The Strategic Outcomes and Local Delivery Plan (SOLD) sets out in detail how the Council will meet this particular priority, and contained in the Fairer Falkirk Poverty Strategy Faced with resource challenge, the council has committed to protecting our most vulnerable citizens, and to work with partners and communities to shape services, and help find insight-driven solutions for the future.
The strategy is built around three interconnected and mutually reinforcing work programmes:
Theme 1: Fairer Money – (Income maximization and Financial Capability) This section is about people maximising their income, understanding how much money they get in their circumstance. Our view is that for many people employment is not a route out of poverty, given rising number of in-work poverty. The goal of fairer money is not about getting people into employment, rather helping people understand how much they can get in their circumstance and how to make the most of the money they have to reduce the impact of poverty.
Theme 2: Fairer Access – We want all our citizens to be able to access the opportunities they need to prosper and live fulfilling lives. Our initiatives will ensure that children in Falkirk have easy access to services that support their welfare, wellbeing, and development (Hub model). Services will be designed around the needs of our citizens and when someone asks us for help we will deliver as much advice and support as we possibly can.
Theme 3: Fairer Culture – We want Falkirk to become a zero stigma place, and we will support a culture of aspiration and innovation. The idea of fairer culture lends itself to a different way of thinking about service design and delivery, not being over-burdensome on families, eg. Cost of school day, media and cultural perceptions, societal influences that may impact, cause, or reinforce poverty.

3. Towards a Fairer Falkirk
Theme 1: Fairer Money -
Fairer Money Group
Purpose
Under the SOLD objective 1 “Falkirk will be a fairer place to live”, the Fairer Falkirk Partnership agreed to create a sub group focussing on “money”.
Fairer Money Partnership includes:
Fairer Falkirk Team
Falkirk Council Community Advice Service
Home Energy Scotland
Citizens Advice Bureau
Conduit Scotland
Falkirk District Credit Union
The group develop collaborative work around the Financial Inclusion agenda such as financial education/awareness, income maximisation, debt management and affordable credit. The organisations who were involved in ‘Fairer Money’ week were also invited to attend the first ‘Fairer Money meeting. Bill Palombo from Grangemouth’s CAB is the Chair for the partnership.
‘Fairer Money’ subgroup was established on Thursday 16th November during Falkirk’s ‘Fairer Money’ week 2017.

4. Towards a Fairer Falkirk
Fairer Money -
Fairer Money Week 2017
Community and Support Hub – Grangemouth
Community hub
Co-location
‘Fairer Money’ week 2017 was held in the East Advice and Support Hub, to raise awareness of the services provided. The East Advice and Support Hub in Grangemouth opened on Monday 12th December 2016 and provides a range of face to face services to people who need it most – either because they are unable to access services in other ways e.g. online, or because they may benefit from additional support.
Within the Hub and at additional community outreach locations Advisors provide help with:
Housing benefit/council tax reduction forms;
Local housing allowance;
Discretionary Housing Payments;
Scottish Welfare Fund grants;
Money advice;
Debt advice;
Welfare benefits;
Bill arrears;
Council tax reductions and exemptions;
Housing options;
Free School Meals and Clothing Grants
Specialist Advisors are available within the Hub to provide further support on:
Money and debt advice
Welfare benefit
Complex finance enquiries
Housing options
General housing issues

5. Fairer Money Week 2017 ‘Promotions’ Falkirk Council website
The Falkirk Herald
Central FM
invitations
Twitter
Graphic Material
A meeting was organised with the Council’s Communication and Participation unit to discuss the most effective communication methods. This resulted in an article being published on Falkirk Council’s webpage, The Falkirk Herald and Central FM. invitations were also sent out to internal and external gatekeepers; Community Advice Service, Children’s Services, Revenues and Benefits, Neighbourhood Officers, Finance, Call Centre and Multi-skilled advisors, external gatekeepers included: Salvation Army, Cyrenians, CVS, Falkirk foodbank, Citizens Advice Bureau and NHS. The gate keepers were encouraged to publicise the week to colleagues and service users.
Each organisation involved was advised to forward their promotional material to the Communications and Participation design team to create graphics which would be displayed on the Grangemouth Hub screen.
Twitter was also used to promote the different services involved in ‘Fairer Money’ week – with a total of 13,379 impressions made (Impressions are the estimated amount of people who seen “Fairer Money” tweets).
There is anecdotal evidence that ‘Fairer Money’ week did raise awareness of the services offered in the Hub and the Entitlement calculator, with members of the public requesting money advice from our welfare and debt advisors based at the Hub.
Furthermore, 118 people accessed the ‘Entitlement’ calculator during Fairer Money Week (13th – 17th November), compared to 44 people the week before (6th – 10th November).

6. Fairer Money Week 2017 Community Advice Service Banner
This is the banner used by both the Welfare Benefits & Debt Advice Team when attending promotional & outreach events.

7. Fairer Money Week 2017 Grangemouth Community Advice Hub
This is Grangemouth Community Hub.

8. Fairer Money Week 2017 Aim: Promote money maximization Debt management
Entitlement Calculator
Affordable credit and encourage credit union uptake
Establish clear referral pathways
Improve home energy efficiency
The purpose of Fairer Money Week was to:
Bring people in to speak with trained advisers at the Hub in Grangemouth, who can liaise with qualified advisors (if needed) and ensure their income is maximized;
Ensure residents in the Falkirk area who are struggling with financial issues have access to appropriate face-to-face advisors who can give professional advice; and
Direct visitors to Falkirk Council’s online ‘Entitlement Calculator’ – a free online service that can give an estimate of what financial help may be available through welfare benefits.
Highlight not-for-profit responsible lenders in Falkirk
Offer free, impartial advice on energy saving, renewable energy, sustainable transport, waste prevention and more. 

9. The Learning Main success Planning for 2018
Falkirk Council’s on-line Entitlement calculator
Raising awareness of services
Planning for 2018
More time needed, start early, continue to build
Speak to the key partners – identify the key priorities
Identify the good practice, what’s working well and share the success
Identify gaps and how to address
Engage the right audience
Planning for 1 day conference
There is anecdotal evidence that ‘Fairer Money’ week did raise awareness of the services offered in the Hub and the Entitlement calculator, as a result of the article published by the communication and participation team citizens did present enquiring about welfare and debt advice. Since the launch of the ‘Entitlement Calculator’ in August 2017, the calculators analytics suggest 1953 people have carried out calculations in the Falkirk Council area with ‘predicated benefit gains of around £4,802,240
Timescale of planning the event was too late and didn’t give us enough time to plan for it properly. However even though we knew time was against us we wanted to ensure we delivered and highlighted all the services available at the Grangemouth Hub and also the partners we work with.
This year we plan to make more of a success and have started planning the event already. We are planning to hold a conference this year including a workshop with key stakeholders and draw down support from the Improvement Service to help facilitate a workshop with our key stakeholders. We will develop an action plan to help us think through clearly what we wish to achieve this year and who can commit to various actions. We will then evaluate the success of 2018 activity compared with 2017.