We are excited to announce that Surviving Economic Abuse, alongside our partners Money Advice Plus, have been awarded a grant of £1.7m by the National Lottery Community Fund. The funding will directly benefit victim-survivors of economic abuse across England.
Our partnership with Money Advice Plus has combined economic abuse expertise and experienced money and debt advice to provide the Financial Support Line for victims of domestic abuse.
Awarded over three years, the funding will allow us to expand the capacity and scope of this partnership and the support services on offer.
The Financial Support Line offers specialist advice to help those who have experienced or are experiencing abuse to regain control of their finances. Through one-off support from a money advisor, victim-survivors can identify the practical steps needed to reach economic safety and regain control.
The service currently supports over 400 victim-survivors of economic abuse each year, but capacity is tight, meaning we are unable to support everyone who tries to access the Line. The additional funding will allow us to increase the service’s capacity and ensure even more people are able to access the help they need.
The additional support will also help guide callers to our specialist information resources, which they can use to take steps to safely de-link from an abuser and regain control. Viewed around 4,000 times each month, our resources help empower victim-survivors by building knowledge and confidence across a range of topics including banking, housing, and debt. These Tools to Thrive can help individuals identify economic abuse and the next steps that they can take.
The funding will also support the expansion of a specialist debt casework service. This service provides more in-depth, tailored advice and support, leading to even more positive outcomes for victim-survivors with particularly complex cases. While already supporting over 100 individuals last year, the extra funding will allow us to expand our capacity and support even more victim-survivors going forward.
The Economic Abuse Evidence Form, currently being piloted by SEA and Money Advice Plus, will also benefit from the National Lottery funding. The EAEF is an information-sharing tool that allows debt advisers to capture, in a single place, information about the abuse that a victim-survivor has experienced. The additional funding will allow us to improve impacts and learning from this innovative project before rolling it out nationally.
The National Lottery funding will also help us to gather data on the types and frequency of issues that victim-survivors of economic abuse experience. Using this data as a powerful evidence base, we can support even more survivors by influencing policy and systems change.
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