Community Money Advice | Freedom from debt. Hope for the future.

Community Money Advice (CMA) is a national charity committed to supporting churches and community groups who have a passion to help people overcome their money problems. CMA provides all the resources, training and support needed to establish and maintain local, free, face to face money advice services.

Each year, our centres help thousands of people, from all walks of life, escape from the blight of indebtedness by providing free, unconditional, fully confidential advice and practical support. Our fully trained Debt Advisers and Money Mentors offer advice specific to each client's needs and they give as much time and support as required, in order to help the client become debt free, whilst working towards financial stability. During the advice process, clients will also be taught budgeting and money management skills, to ensure they have control over their finances, enabling them to remain debt free in the future.

We know all about debt and what impact it has: it can feel like being in a prison where you can see no way out; it can make you feel afraid, ashamed, guilty, angry. We know it can make every part of your life hard and stressful and make you feel you can’t face another day.

However, there is a way out and our advisers can help you to get free. They help thousands of others across the UK every year to not only get out of debt but teach them how to remain debt free in the future.

Our services are always:

• Free
• Confidential
• Sympathetic - you’ll never be judged
• Face to face with a real person

Our advisers will:

• take over dealing with your creditors
• help you manage your household budget
• work with you for as long as you need help

For more information about the services our centres are able to offer, find your nearest CMA centre and make an appointment with one of our experienced advisers and mentors by using the GET HELP link below:

There are many ways you can help those struggling with the burden that indebtedness brings

• Open your own Community Money Advice centre
• Train as a debt adviser and volunteer at an existing centre
• Train to be able to offer budgeting help & guidance
• Offer signposting to online & telephone advice
• Support CMA financially

To find out more about how you can join in our life changing work, see the video from Jasmine Birtles, CMA's Patron and use the links below:

TRAINING

CMA is able to take anyone interested in learning about being a debt adviser from a position of no knowledge, to becoming a fully trained debt adviser. The "Community Money Advice Level 3 Award in Generalist Debt Advice" is Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) accredited to Advice Level and is available for anyone to attend, whether part of a CMA affiliate centre or not. This Level 3 Award consists of 3 separate training days along with some in-house Listening Skills and Role-play training. Please click on the "Training" tab at the top of this page for more details.

CMA also offers an alternative option for those working in a CMA Connect Centre, to undertake training to become Money Mentors. For those engaged in a CMA Connect centre, the online Listening Skills and Role-play training modules are required to be completed during the setup process. Our Connect Money Mentor training is only available to those working within CMA affiliate centres.

We also offer Insolvency Training and Budget Coach Training days, both of which are open to anyone to book onto. More details can be found by clicking the "Training" tab at the top of this page.

CONFERENCE

As a family of centres we all have the opportunity to meet together usually annually for a time of learning, worship and networking over two days at our national conference. With a range of speakers and different seminars it is a great way of keeping up to date with what is happening in the debt advice sector as well as being refreshed, encouraged and envisioned for the year ahead.

For existing CMA centres and CMA advisers, a full range of documentation and resources is available to support your work including:

• All the policy and procedure templates and guides to be able to setup and run a centre:
• CMA email & telephone adviceline details
• FCA and CONC compliance guides and templates
• Insolvency information, options and documentation

In order to access these you will need to login.

For those looking to set up a centre or find out more about resources CMA offer do check out our shop

For all the latest news and updates within the sector CMA produce regular email bulletins for our affiliated centres which can be accessed via Centre Resources. For more general updates and information these are usually posted on Facebook, twitter and also on our news page via the link below.