Disabled Child Finance Facility - Summary for project managers

Barnardo’s and Action for Children have been approached by the Council for Disabled Children to ask for our help and support with a new website for parents of disabled children concerning financial matters.

Research carried out by an organisation called Social Finance has clearly indicated  that families with a disabled child experience high levels of financial exclusion.   Their financial concerns include access to benefits, access to credit and loans at reasonable rates and access to travel and life insurance. The Family Fund, together with Social Finance, have therefore been working together to identify a range of products and services that meet the needs of families with disabled children.

On the website, families would initially be asked a range of questions such as are you confident that your family is getting all the benefits they are entitled to? Are you worried about debt?  Are you paying more than £15 per month in bank charges?  Families will then be directed to relevant information on benefits advice, debt advice, money management, loans and insurance.

We have been asked to help in identifying families with a disabled child who would be willing to participate in a test of some of the products and services that have been selected to be included on the website. The testing process begins in the Autumn and will also involve giving some feedback on those services to Social Finance.  The Family Fund have already identified a number of families on very low incomes that are willing to take part, but obviously the more families who test out and give feedback (across the income range), the better and more user friendly the end product is likely to be.

Please could you identify any families known to your service who would be willing to take part?  You would then be asked towards the middle of September to forward on to those families an email from Social Finance which explains the services in clear, jargon-free language. The email will contain hyperlinks so that families can click straight through to the services that interest them and there will an option of whether they would be willing to be contacted to give feedback.

I would therefore be very grateful if you could let me know by the end of August if you have any families who would like to be involved in testing out this out this new product.

Clare Gent
Strategic Development Manager, Disability
Tel: 01786 465820
Mobile: 07905 237556