Advice: Annual Review 2021 – 2022

Our MVAP partnership links directly into our advice work, which we see as an essential part of our services – it always was and still is.

We are trying to bring a trauma-informed approach to everything we do: this includes advice. The benefit, debt, and housing problems people bring to us have often exacerbated their mental health problems. This means that we sometimes need to spend time to allow people to feel safe enough to tell us their story or at least the bits that are relevant to the advice process – it isn’t always an easy or comfortable thing to do, so we need to respect this and give people time.

One of our advice workers spoke to someone whose first words were “you will give up on this case in the end, no one ever sticks with me, I’m too hard to work with.” She explained that she struggled to engage consistently and other agencies just wouldn’t help her. Although she struggled to maintain contact with us, the small gestures of persistence really meant a lot to her. At the end they sent a text that said “you’ve shown me that some organisations do care about mental health”.

“I feel that mental health issues and financial difficulties go hand in hand. People like Lisa (Advice Worker) are integral in the journey of stability and recovery”

Manchester Mind has advice workers on in-patient units and within Community Mental Health Teams, in our Children and Young People’s service and they all deal with issues that can be simple through to complex but all involve listening and identifying what the main issue is for a person.

Find out more about our advice team, our support sessions and access information about money and mental health.