The most important difference is in human terms, that our help means people can cope and are not so depressed and isolated.
In addition to this, our help saves the community money. Every time we sort out a problem and relieve stress we save the NHS the cost of treating it.
Most of our work on welfare benefits is for people who are too ill to work. We have a 95% success rate for clients appealing benefit decisions where the CAB support the appeal and prepare a written submission for the clients
Without our help many of these people would suffer depression and other mental health problems.
In 2009 – 2010 at Kingston CAB we achieved ‘Financial Gains’ for our clients of £1.2 million and in 2010-2011 we again recorded gains of £1.05 million, so, for every £1 in grant £4 comes back to the local economy
Every time we prevent someone from becoming homeless we save the council the cost of re-housing! Homelessness was prevented for 30 clients and their families. This is a massive saving for our local authority as, often, if people lose their homes they are re-housed by the council. Research conducted by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) estimates that it would cost £34000 on average to the local Authority to house a client who is repossessed, so, if all 30 families had had to be re-housed, it would have cost the Royal Borough of Kingston nearly £1.02 million.