Funding to transform lives through Ipswich Energy Caseworker Project

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Funding to transform lives through Ipswich Energy Caseworker Project

As part of its multi-streamed Income Maximisation team, Citizens Advice Ipswich piloted an energy advice project to help vulnerable people experiencing fuel poverty funded by The Cadent Foundation. After this pilot which demonstrated valuable and life-changing work by the caseworkers, the funding for the project has been extended by a further year.

Thanks to this additional funding, the project team have helped an additional 250 clients facing fuel poverty, supported over an average of 4 appointments. The dedicated team supported these clients with 3000 issues (of which 1600 were energy-related) and helped clients to get an overall income gain of over £230,000.*

The project’s aims are to tackle financial hardship, preventing crisis by raising awareness of support available and intervening when clients need support to resolve fuel debt and disconnection. The Citizens Advice Ipswich Energy Team provide specialist energy advice, and through the Cadent Foundation funding, maintain contact with the client for the duration of their support journey.

One client had individual support for much needed domestic items and to sort inadequate heat and mould in their rented property. They had stopped showering and using the oven due to electricity bills which had affected their mental and physical health.

They had the following comment for the funder: “The adviser I spoke to rapidly turned my life around. She was always friendly, kind, patient and caring. She is an asset to Citizens Advice Ipswich, but she would not be there, or have the ability to source funding and goods needed, were it not for generous donations from organisations, such as yourselves.“

Senior Energy and Income Maximisation Caseworker, Anna, explains the dilemma clients are facing:

“As the Cost of Living Crisis continues we are seeing more and more clients turning off their energy supply (disconnecting) due to lack of funds. Families that were managing before are worried about getting food on the table and so they’re going without heat and electricity a lot of the time.

“The Cadent project has enabled us to take a holistic approach to really understand the full household circumstances and we look not only for quick fixes and grants, but really long term solutions to help support clients in fuel poverty.

“We have an awful lot of clients that contact us when they are receiving bills and fundamentally they don’t even understand whether those bills are correct or not. Recently, we spoke to an older client living alone who came in with the bill for £106,000. Her energy supply was estimating her bills and according to them she was using £26,000 a month. There was absolutely no way she was going to be able to resolve that herself due to lengthy wait times to resolve billing issues at customer service level.”

Citizens Advice Ipswich Chief Officer, Nicky Willshere, said: “We are delighted and grateful that this project will continue, thanks to the continued funding from The Cadent Foundation funding. This is a great addition to the generous support received from the Suffolk Community Foundation, the Health Inequalities Board and other funders.”

 “The capacity to offer casework makes a real difference to our clients’ prospects. Not only getting them out of the fuel debt they face but working with suppliers and others on tariffs and grants to ensure that the household can heat their homes and feed their families going forward.

“The work has also fed into our social policy mission, demonstrating how the Energy industry could best support their customers: by offering social tariffs to people on a low income, trying to discourage digital exclusion, clearing payment options, providing more support for clients to read their meters, to resolve simple billing enquiries and more funded projects to support vulnerable low income households.”

To get help, clients can contact Citizens Advice Ipswich by phone, email or in person.