Just Finance Foundation’s COVID Cash Recovery is a trailblazing course equipping churches and community leaders to support people facing financial hardship through COVID-19 and beyond.
In 2019, Benefact Trust awarded Just Finance Foundation (JFF) £250,000 funding towards the expansion if its LifeSavers programme - an educational scheme helping children to learn how to manage money effectively.
When Coronavirus hit, the staff were temporarily deployed as frontline support for families facing financial struggles and COVID Cash Recovery (CCR) was born.
Since then, emergency funding of £100,000 from Benefact Trust has helped JFF to expand its CCR training to over 1,700 churches, charities and community organisations, helping more than 45,000 people to avoid financial crisis.
Due to the financial chaos of Covid-19, it has been difficult for people to know what they’re entitled to and what support is available to them.
COVID Cash Recovery up-skills churches and community leaders to provide information and resources to the community, so that vulnerable people have a better understanding of how to cope financially. The course covers general entitlements, Universal Credit, budgeting, available grants, debt advice and much more.
Darren’s Story
Darren was like many others who unexpectedly fell out of work in April 2019. Through a colleague, he was asked to attend the COVID Cash Course as a representative of his local church so that he could offer help, information and resources to people in the community who were struggling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Darren, with personal debts of over £15,000, the debt section of the course was able to inspire him to take action.
After attending the course in April, Darren explains that he is now on the path to recovery because of the COVID Cash Course:
“I now have a job with the NHS. Had I not attended the COVID cash course run by the Just Finance Foundation, I would not have found out about the debt counselling service I really needed. I now continue to assist other people in my community with CCR when I operate as an itinerant pastor in my spare time. I can empathise with others, knowing exactly how it feels to be in debt and worried about the future.”
