Financial wellbeing in your local authority

Personal finances impact on all aspects of your residents’ wellbeing – physical, mental and financial health are closely linked. Local authorities have unique levels of access to provide financial wellbeing support in key stages of life, and for those who are most vulnerable, such as looked-after children or older people.

Supporting financial wellbeing is another way you can help people in your community and improve their health and happiness, and strengthen the services you provide.

Financial wellbeing is about feeling secure and in control. It is about making the most of your money day to day, dealing with the unexpected, and being on track for a healthy financial future. In short: financially resilient, confident and empowered.

At MaPS, we’re working with organisations like yours to build financial wellbeing across the UK, to help businesses, communities and individuals thrive.

Our lives are perhaps most directly influenced at the local level – though our homes, schools, places of work, and neighbourhoods. And it’s at a local level where residents can come into contact with services and support mechanisms that can improve their lives.

Your local authority is well placed to support residents’ financial wellbeing through a wide range of services:

• Offering social housing tenants support with skills such as budgeting, or offering them money guidance at key life stages such as maternity/paternity or redundancy.
• Supporting schools and children’s services to offer children and young people a meaningful financial education, so they can make informed choices about their money in adult life.
• Embedding our free tools and content on your websites to support residents directly with finding local debt advice, budgeting, coronavirus money guidance and more.
• Recovering council tax in a way that collaborates with debt advice agencies to support people in arrears.

We can offer free, bespoke support to your different services to help you integrate free money guidance, tools and financial wellbeing strategies.

Your council is also a large employer in your area and is a great access point for money guidance. Learn more about how we can help you build financial wellbeing in your workplace.

Professionals who work with vulnerable children and young people on a day-to-day basis are well-placed to help them develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to make the most of their money now and into adulthood.

We have developed a series of regional guides to support professionals working with children and young people. There are four guides in total and these constitute guidance for leaders and decision-makers of children and young people’s services in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

To improve provision for all we need a better understanding of the children and young people who are least likely to access a meaningful financial education or more susceptible to poor financial capabilities.

Together with The Centre for Financial Capability, we have put together a summary of what we know – and what we don’t know – about the financial wellbeing of children and young people in vulnerable circumstances. This is based on studies including the Children and Young People’s Financial Wellbeing Survey 2022 and our Vulnerability Review 2018Opens in a new window and findings from our 2023 Evidence Review.

We offer a wide array of free support to businesses including:

• a dedicated partnership manager based in your location, with managers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and regions across England
• bespoke support to help you build and implement your financial wellbeing strategy
• a selection of guides available in English and Welsh, and in print, braille or audio format, for free
• a help with the cost of living hub featuring articles, tools, calculators and a printable guide to support your colleagues and customers.
• our annual Talk Money Week awareness campaign, which provides a platform for conversations about money in all walks of life.

MoneyHelperOpens in a new window offers a bi-lingual service via a variety of channels, with tools and helplines in English and Welsh, including:

• guidance on life events, such as a section on losing your job or about divorce and how this affects pensions.
• help employees plan for later life with a section dedicated to pensions and retirement guidance.
• various tools and calculators offer personalised guidance for topics including debt advice.

We can also offer local authorities:

• Increased knowledge about your local needs through our insight and research.
• Understanding from our research how introducing financial wellness initiatives into your area will benefit your residents.
• Help to design and implement financial wellness initiatives strategically and effectively.
• The opportunity to partner with us in running and evaluating pilots to improve financial wellbeing.

Contact our regional partnerships team for free support and practical ways to help you build financial wellbeing across your organisation.

Based near you, our partnerships teams can help bring your organisation an understanding of some of the local financial wellbeing challenges.

If your organisation has multiple sites, please contact the regional manager closest to your head office.