How we help people in Wales

Problems can be complicated — we helped 100,000 people in Wales with theirs last year

Last year we helped give over 100,000 people in Wales the knowledge and confidence they need to find their way forward.

We helped people with over 400,000 problems, meaning each person who came to us for support had an average of 4 problems.

Over 610,000 people in Wales also accessed our online advice.

This data helps us to understand the problems people face in Wales and gives us an insight into what people most need help with. We use this knowledge to campaign on big issues, both locally and nationally.

Who do we help?

Almost half of our clients have a disability or long term health condition — that’s 25 percentage points above the Welsh national average. Wales also has a higher proportion of people claiming disability/sickness benefits compared to the UK — 9.1% versus 6.9%.

The most common problems for these clients were all benefits related, including Personal Independence Payments (PIP), Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and housing benefits, with PIP accounting for over a third of all problems.

What problems are people facing?

The top problems for our clients last year were:

• Benefits and tax credits
• Debt
• Financial capability
• Housing
• Employment

People’s problems are not clear cut

Most people who came to us had more than 1 problem, which are often interlinked and complicated.

Clients who came to see us with a problem with council tax arrears often saw us with the following problems:

The diagram shows that some clients who had problems with council tax arrears also had debts to local authorities, housing associations and private landlords.

Rent arrears are one of the household debts that people most struggle with, and make up 6% of all our clients’ debt problems (7,044 problems).

Many of our clients who came to see us about problems with council tax arrears also had a problem with housing. Last year, we helped 8,994 people with 13,807 housing problems. Problems with privately rented housing dominate in this area, accounting for almost a third (29%) of all problems.

Problems with privately rented accommodation were mostly linked to repairs and maintenance of the property, rents and tenancy deposit protection, as Ian’s story below shows.

“Ian has been living in a privately-rented property for 5 years — but the conditions are terrible. It’s leaking and there’s ventilation problems, which causes Ian and his family anxiety, stress and a range of health problems. An adviser assured Ian it was the landlord and letting agency’s responsibility to ensure all repairs are carried out. The adviser made a call to the agency on Ian’s behalf, and was told all repairs would be carried out within the next week. Ian is relieved and hopeful.”

Supporting people with debt related problems

We also saw over 27,000 people with over 115,000 debt related issues.

It was more common for people to come to us for help with household bill debts — such as council tax or energy bills — than with consumer credit debts. The single largest debt problem that our advisers see is council tax arrears.

Problems with household bill debts were more likely to be related to the way these debts are collected. In 2017–18 clients with household and government debt problems had 5,600 problems relating to enforcement by bailiffs — that’s 11%.

Supporting people with mental health problems

Having mental health problems can make it difficult for people to manage other practical problems in their lives, such as money, housing, immigration and employment.

Clients who identified as having a mental health condition came to us with an average of 6 problems compared to 4 problems for all other clients.

These problems can also make a mental health condition worse. Mental health practitioners have told us they’re spending increasing amounts of time helping patients with practical problems instead of focusing on their treatment.

Having practical advice available in mental health settings means advisers can help mental health practitioners who are trying to resolve problems that are non-medical. Better Advice Better Lives (BABL) is a Welsh Government-funded project which allows some of our advisers to do just that.

We know from our own research with clients that providing access to free, impartial advice builds people’s resilience and improves wellbeing — 8 in 10 people felt less stressed, depressed or anxious after coming to us for advice. So, making sure people in Wales have access to free, good quality, independent advice is essential.

We’ve called on the Welsh Government to continue to support the provision of this advice, and for people with mental health problems we’ve called for this advice to be available in health settings.