Help Through Crisis Project restarts

The Help Through Crisis project is about to begin its second three-year phase and will focus on Norwich, King’s Lynn, Great Yarmouth and Thetford. The core principle of the project is to provide structured support to those individuals in or entering crisis by creating personal plans that offer planned and staged help from multiple partners. Support includes advice, training, bursaries, vouchers and some highly specialist interventions. The second phase has largely been funded by the National Lottery but is also being match-funded by the lead partner, Norfolk Citizens Advice, and project partners, Citizens Advice Diss and Thetford and the Mancroft Advice Project.

Phase one of the project ran in Breckland and Norwich, ended in June 2021 and supported 318 clients in crisis. Health issues were the primary reason for contact in only 7% of cases but benefits, housing, discrimination and debt issues were all significant factors in leading to crisis. However, over half of clients’ cause of crisis was due to physical/mental health, relationship breakdown and domestic abuse.
 
These are the ‘causes of causes’ of poor wellbeing. The project not only allows for support to key risk factors related to poverty and low social status but also builds self-esteem, social support and self-empowerment. We found that making multi-issue improvement in clients’ lives in this way led to a related improvement in their mental and physical health scores. At least 62% expressed increased long-term resilience as a result of the project work.

Watch this space for updates on the project as it begins and provides more valuable support to people across Norfolk.