About Clean Slate

What We Are Here To Do

We want to see a world where people can provide for themselves and their family, where society addresses everyone’s needs and where it does not cost more to be poor. It should provide fair opportunity for all so anyone willing and able can access employment.

Our job is to do everything possible to enable people to improve their financial wellbeing. Everyone needs to be able to manage their money well, find work and access every facility to help them do so, including online services.

​Clean Slate, in partnership with Quids in!, is re-writing the rulebook on helping low income households to become better off. We are proudly different by:
  • Explaining to claimants, tenants and low-income earners what’s really going on, what to be cautious about and what opportunities exist
  • Recognising and helping people to see their own abilities to help themselves and each other
  • Focusing on the present and the future, not the past, and respecting people's need for something personalised and of practical benefit to them now and into the future
  • Valuing people as integral to how we engage others from similar backgrounds and activating people as community activists by making them central within our enterprise
  • Being motivated by social justice, tackling poverty and inequality and giving people a voice
  • Making sustainability, independence, people’s trust and creating a real difference core to our work

Clean Slate Training & Employment is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company in business to:
  • Provide skills and training to people at risk of or affected by poverty and/or unemployment, and the people who work with them, so everyone can provide for themselves and their family and get involved in their communities
  • Promote ways for people to ‘future-proof’ their finances, engage with digital life
  • Create paid work and other opportunities for benefit claimants, social tenants and low-paid workers as stepping stones towards reaching their potential

How we do it

Clean Slate delivers support, guidance and training in a number of ways. We help people on lower incomes become better off by helping them re-organise how they manage their money, find work or better work, and get online. We also have a money skills programme called Quids in! (More here.) You can get involved by:
  • Visiting a Quids In Centre. These include places like libraries, community cafes, housing offices and children’s centres, for example, where our staff teams offer drop-ins to access the internet, discuss money issues or try to find work. The teams here include support staff and Peer Workers, recruited because they know the local area and what it means to get by on a lower income. See if there’s a centre near you here. (Most Centres are closed until lockdown is lifted.)
  • Come along to one of our interactive workshops. Meet with people from a similar background and join the conversation about ways to juggle our finances or new ideas to help find work. Past attendees report ‘feeling 10-feet tall’ because their confidence was through the roof. Our 3 Bs money skills course is usually one day and our 7 Signs course for jobseekers is usually two days. Keep an eye out for dates and timings here. (Courses will resume post-lockdown.)
  • Since lockdown, a lot of our support and guidance has been provided over the phone and internet. (See more on these services here.) Benefit claimants in some areas can ask their Work Coach to put them forward for one of our programmes, (currently operating in Wales, West London, East London, Essex and Peterborough). Tenants of L&Q and Stonewater housing associations can ask a housing officer to refer them to us. Residents in Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol, Gloucestershire, East London (Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney) and Southwark can contact us direct – see here for details.
  • Join the team. We recruit, train and employ some of the people who attend our events to help others like them. This way, jobseekers help jobseekers and claimants help other claimants because they understand the challenges people face. One way many of our team got started was to get involved in one of our services and ask about any Peer Support work coming up. Otherwise, check out our vacancies here.
  • Quids in! magazine provides information on stretching and growing a limited budget through its magazines and guides, email service and website. Find out more at quidsinmagazine.com.

Work with us

If you are interested in Clean Slate's training for your organisation or clients we would love to hear from you.
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We are also keen to hear from any organisation that would like to partner with Clean Slate for their area.

Contact us here.

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