Debt advice service goes online during coronavirus pandemic

Lorraine Cook is The Salvation Army’s financial inclusion development manager and is responsible for our debt advice and budgeting services across the UK and Ireland.

The face-to-face debt advice service is essential and Lorraine and her team have met the challenge of finding a way to still provide it during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We‘ve adapted the service and the way it is run to comply with Government public health guidelines around social distancing and I am incredibly proud that in the space of just one week we’ve managed to change the debt advice service into an online one” said Lorraine.

“With that comes the need to adapt our client management system so that we’re able to contact them directly using whatever technology is available. That might be a telephone call or a video call using WhatsApp – it depends on how we can contact the client and the technology they’re using”

And with the online debt advice service now up-and –running, Lorraine is anticipating there will be an increase in demand for it because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic is going to hit people down the road because lots of people have borrowed money and their creditors will want that money back at some point” said Lorraine

“The main thing for me is that we are a Christian debt advice service and we started this service to support people in our society who were burdened by debt. We are The Salvation Army and if it appears on some occasions that there’s not actually much we can do for people, we can still connect with them and ask them how they’re doing and support them that way.”