Over the past 12 months, we have experienced exponential growth in demand for our service. The alarming situation caused by the current financial crisis left many people unable to support themselves and their families. Unable to recover from the pandemic which disproportionally impacted minoritised groups, our communities were coming to the crisis weakened. Many residents lost their incomes during the pandemic, causing them to fall into debt and even lose their homes. They are now struggling to keep up with the rises in food prices and household bills.
We are seeing a large increase in families going to food banks which was previously a taboo for the communities as it brings up a lot of stigma and shame. Others go hungry or fall into even greater debt just to manage their day-to-day life. Especially worrying is the impact the crisis has on single mothers, disabled residents, elderly people, destitute and NRPF individuals and families.
After Covid-19, the recent cost of living crisis has significantly affected a high percentage of households
The Advice Staff at ibaa
across the UK and has added much more challenging and financial pressure on our already vulnerable clients. This situation has led to a huge increase in the level of demand for help and services from our organisation. This issue has created an overload case issue on our team, especially since most of the cases need general support and advice, and we the current levels of funding do not cover enough advice work to accommodate all the clients that need help.
Poverty can hurt mental health when financial resources do not meet the cost of living. deficiencies in basic living needs like home heating, nutrition and clothing, can all push a person into a downward spiral. The consequences for mental health across the community are staggering as people are terrified about losing their homes, and not being able to feed their children properly. Many of our clients are already traumatised and/or suffer from severe anxiety, especially the survivors of domestic violence we support.
Moreover, this pressure is adding to frontline staff who takes on people’s worries and stresses and becomes overwhelmed. The demand for our services far exceeds our capacity and all partners had to put up waiting lists. The staff have been stretched to the maximum and we cannot further increase the support without additional funding as the staff is already overloaded. Additional support has been offered by line managers across the partnership to support the advice staff in accessing mental health and stress relief assistance.
Nevertheless, we will continue to work hard to support all BAMERs through this hard period. We are aware that our services have never been so essential. we will do our best to further increase ibaa’s accessibility and reach to ensure nobody is excluded from access to life-changing help at a time of such a great need.
Annually, IBAA’s partners support 5,000+ people from BAMER community through a broad range of advice.
