Community Benefit Funds step up to support CABs tackling the cost-of-living impact

Blog by Eilidh Coll, Community Funds Advisor for Caithness and Sutherland

Over recent months Foundation Scotland has been working with communities to ensure wind farm community benefit funding is reaching the most vulnerable during the cost-of-living crisis. 

Many community organisations providing vital support to those in need are experiencing the double whammy of keeping themselves afloat amidst rising costs while increasing the range and level of support they offer, to an increasing number of people. 

Foundation Scotland and the community panels or boards making funding decisions have been hearing these concerns, but it has been clear from the outset that a ‘one size fits all’ approach isn’t necessarily the right support for every organisation or in every community context. For many of us grappling with this conversation, the issues feel huge, and it can feel challenging to plot a course for your fund that will make a meaningful impact. As a Panel volunteer recently put it, “There’s no point offering paracetamol when antibiotics are the necessary solution - even then it’s got to be the right antibiotic.”  

Given this, we thought it would be helpful to share some examples of recent Fund approaches to working with local Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABs). CABs are a network of independent charities, present in every local authority area in Scotland except South Ayrshire. CABs offer confidential advice online, over the phone, and in person, for free. They give a wide range of advice and support with the common aim of helping people with the underlying cause of their problems to make sure they don’t get worse.

Following some early meetings between our Caithness-based Foundation Scotland staff member and the Manager of Caithness Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB), a budget was agreed which would cover the cost of two dual-role Money Advice and Energy Advice Officers. An additional budget was also agreed for discretionary support to households in immediate need. This was up to £400 per household and based on numbers of households in the fund area of benefit. 

The budget means that the Officers can provide urgent help for people to address an immediate need, such as topping up meters, bulk buying some fuel, laundering school uniforms or providing meals. One principle underpinning the support is that the CAB uses its expertise to first ensure that the household has applied to other available funding sources before utilising the local budget, ensuring that it will stretch as far as possible. As well as responding to the crisis need, the Officers can then work to improve the longer term financial circumstances of the household through the provision of energy advice and money advice.  

In total, there have been eight awards amounting to £101,000, from five different wind farm community benefit funds in Caithness to support these two new posts at the Caithness CAB. 

Meanwhile at the other end of the country, in Dumfries and Galloway, two community benefit funds which cover between them 37 rural Community Council areas, supported Dumfries and Galloway Citizens Advice Bureau with grants totalling £103,191. 

This initiative arose where the Boards with responsibility for these community benefit funds were seeking to make an effective contribution in the face of the cost of living crisis, but were weighing up a limited fund balance against the desire to demonstrate support and to ensure that any award made would make a tangible difference to as many people as possible. 

In discussions facilitated by Foundation Scotland, two Boards chose to pro-actively support the local CAB because they saw that the CAB brought longstanding expertise and could offer a service which would maximise the financial position of every individual they supported. Crucially, the CAB had also recently undertaken some research which highlighted local ‘cold spots’ for service provision and need and so could evidence clearly where these funds could step in and make a significant difference to the local landscape.

These awards enabled the CAB to recruit new adviser posts and start offering an outreach clinic in many rural communities who were at a distance from existing CAB services. The CAB had recently undertaken some work to understand where their clients were based and how people wanted to access services. The CAB could evidence that around a third of those responding preferred a face-to-face rather than online or telephone service, and that fuel costs were hitting individuals’ opportunities to travel to access services. The grant awards will enable the outreach clinics to run for two years, giving them enough time to bed in and to get a measure of what difference they are making in the rural communities supported.

Another solution, devised by a Community Benefit Fund Panel in Argyll and Bute saw £12,000 allocated for Argyll and Bute CAB to establish a hardship voucher scheme throughout the winter of 2022-23. This was a discretionary award made by the Community Fund Panel outwith the usual application, and of a greater amount than usually applied to applications; again facilitated by a Foundation Scotland staff member, the Panel had proactively planned the award, offering it to the Bureau without the usual need for an application from the group.

Relief to residents in the Fund area of benefit is being made available by way of a voucher scheme such as that offered by the Fuel Bank Foundation, as appropriate to the needs of the household in question. It was agreed that vouchers would be offered to a maximum of £400 and to individuals most in need, and that identification would be achieved through the usual assessment and advice service offered by Argyll & Bute CAB.

These examples show how community benefit funds, managed flexibly, can provide both some pain relief and some antibiotic by engaging with an expert partner such as the CAB network. These grants link together the themes of tackling inequality and improving wellbeing while also being relevant to the Foundation’s commitment to support more ‘upstream’ or preventative action.

If you are interested in discussing how your fund can help to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, contact your Fund Adviser.