Why Debt Advice is now a Never-ending Story

There’s a file

You’ve had open for years

D R O

Debts completely cleared

But now the client’s struggling

With the cost of everything

Council Tax with Jacobs

And you know that it’s a never-ending story

Ahhhhhhhhh 🥴

I miss the days when my debt advice clients were genuinely able to get a fresh start. I still remember one from many years ago who emerged from the County Court apparently reborn, having successfully petitioned for her own bankruptcy. For the lady in question, it was the start of a new and better life, full of optimism, and for me, a happy moment that reminded me why I loved the job. I bet lots of advisers have memories like this.

These were the days when a client could move on with their life, their debts behind them. The case came to a natural close; all work completed. Job well done and an invaluable moment of satisfaction in what can at times be a … frustrating vocation.

I have seen a significant change to debt advice in the last few years, partly fuelled by a cost of living crisis, in which not having enough money to live on has become normalised. The rise in the number of high street ‘Foodbanks’ accepted. (One day, if we’re not careful, we’ll have not just any foodbank, but an M&S foodbank.) A Department for Work and Pensions focussed on taking money off benefit claimants regardless of the perilous state this leaves them in. In the extreme, gas and electricity prices have cost people their lives as they freeze in their own homes rather than turn the heating on, for fear of getting into debt.

As a debt adviser, it has meant that a client becoming debt-free may only be so for a short time (days maybe) before becoming indebted again. The bills lurk like harbingers, creeping around in the shadows. You don’t have to look at them to know they’re there, or how horrific they will be.

Thinking back over the last year or two, I realise now that I miss giving debt advice too. My clients’ minds are of course focussed on the next energy bill, the rent/mortgage, money for food. Immediate need. As a result, my time these days is not often spent discussing section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980, nor what that odious firm of debt collectors are going to do about the County Court Judgment they recently obtained, and what we might do about it, but spending hours – HOURS – on the phone trying to speak to energy companies, housing associations, and the ultimate Behemoth of Time-wasting: the Department for Work and Pensions.

I see endless webpages filled with Cost of Living Crisis ‘content’– advice and tips, on every local authority and company website which suggests an awareness of the crisis but offers little in the way of practical assistance. Honestly, what a waste of time. Money is what people need, not advice about trimming tuppence off their gas bill.

Beveridge would frankly be spinning in his grave if he knew what had become of the welfare state in this country. From the cradle to the grave? At both ends, the safety net is so frayed you couldn’t catch a blue whale in it, and the middle bit is non-existent.

And so progress with my clients is made at the pace of a morbidly obese slug. And it isn’t really progress at all, it’s sticking plasters at best. Clients present with little hope (one recently told me he’d been researching Dignitas because he feels like a burden) and yet, scramble around as we do, trying to find an energy top-up voucher from somewhere, it’s a struggle to find any. Hope, that is. And energy vouchers too, come to think of it.

But it’s not just the punitive poverty. The funding of debt advice in this country has also changed the nature of the job to something many no longer recognise. As clients’ situations have become more precarious and complicated, the debt adviser has been given less time and scope than ever to offer resolutions to their clients. I am not in this situation luckily, but I hear about it often and it doesn’t bode well for any of us.

I also hear that some ‘advisers’ barely advise at all. Instead, funders are keen to report on the numbers of people whose calls were answered, who were given information from a website and encouraged to help themselves. The funders don’t appear to be too concerned with whether or not that indebted person ever followed up on the instructions they were given. But the advisers are. Is it any coincidence that IVAs are on the increase? A phone call to a debt packager is unlikely to lead to a factsheet and DIY template letters.

In my opinion, that’s not a job well done. That’s a job that now has a famous Rolling Stones song for a soundtrack. That lack of fulfilment in the job can and does negatively impact an adviser’s well-being and mental health. Many debt advisers have left, and continue to leave, the profession, because debt advice is a job worth doing only when you are allowed to do it. We don’t train and study year on year to sit hobbled in call centres trying to hit impossible targets.

People need help at the moment. And there are still plenty of helpful people around who would if they could but there are too many barriers being placed in the way. For instance, High Street banks closing branches, NHS dentists rarer than unicorn teeth, every corporate website hiding their contact details in a maze of internet-ese, doctor’s surgeries where the person signing your repeat prescription has never met you and possibly never will, libraries closing, supermarket products doubling in price each week, benefit caps, sanctions, bedroom taxes, and on and on.

Are we really happy with this state of affairs? Well, of course we’re not. Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ was nought but horse manure, but what has grown from it is a hostile, divisive and exclusive society, which rejects responsibility for its most vulnerable. Apparently, we’re all obsessed with stopping small boats. None of my clients have ever blamed refugees for the trouble they are in. To repeat: it’s bills, food, roof over the head, worry, fear, frustration at not being able to easily communicate with those holding the power and control over these commodities.

It’s getting to the point where I think about making a phone call, knowing that (a) it might not get answered at all, (b) it will still take the best part of an hour to even try, and (c) even if I get through, the person on the other end either won’t know how to help my client, won’t have the authority to do so, or just plain won’t. So what’s the point?

At the moment, almost every client needs help filling in an application for discretionary support from the Council. It’s arduous. Forms are long, tedious to complete and they require granular knowledge of what a person spends in Aldi every week. And on what day of the month they will be spending £15 on clothing and shoes. I don’t have the answer. Clients don’t either.

While this is now the job, day in, day out, and I try to maintain my sanity and professionalism, I think of the debt advisers who are further hampered by less visible obstacles – job insecurity, low pay, targets, unfillable vacancies, increasing demand, and less friendly workplaces as organisations try to manage their own increasing costs by inevitably making cuts.

And this is why some of my clients become never-ending stories with a never-ending list of problems that, honestly, no-one can solve. That won’t stop me and my colleagues in debt advice trying though. And I do worry that writing this gives the impression that I have given up. I haven’t. Amongst all of this ranting, I still find solutions for people, I know my colleagues in debt advice do too. Those of us left still try and succeed. But, seriously, something has to give soon, because it’s becoming soul-destroying and painful. For people in debt and for us.