StepChange Narrative - Short Form
We are the UK’s leading debt charity, contacted by hundreds of thousands of people a year online and by phone, across all nations and regions. We help people in debt to sleep at night knowing that they have a realistic plan to address their financial problems. We support people to take back control of their situation and we never judge.
We are FCA authorised and work with creditors, government, regulators and other charities to provide the best service we can to our clients, to address the misconceptions that underpin the stigma of debt, and to change public policy to reduce the risk of debt.
We constantly seek to refine and improve our own work, to collaborate with others, and to use insights from our clients to influence change. Our vision is of a society free from problem debt.
StepChange Narrative - Long Form
Who we are
StepChange is the UK’s leading debt charity. We are contacted by hundreds of thousands of people every year. We help people in debt to sleep at night knowing that they have a plan to address their situation.
We understand that debt is stressful, and that the reasons for it are varied. We support people to take back control of their situation and we never judge.
We know that only by working collaboratively with a wide range of organisations and people will we achieve our ultimate goal of a society free from problem debt.
What we do
We provide advice by telephone and online to people who are facing debt problems and want to resolve them. Our advice services are always free, and we are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
We offer a wider range of solutions to debt problems than any other debt charity, in every nation and region of the UK, so that we can offer a truly tailored approach for every client.
We recommend specific solutions based on individual circumstances, driven only by assessment of each client’s best interests. We also provide generic money and budgeting information for people who simply need support to take control of their own financial situation.
If people can afford to repay their debt within a reasonable time and decide to take this approach, we help them to do that by getting all their creditors to agree to revised repayments, which we then collect as a single sum and distribute to creditors on their behalf. If people can’t afford to repay their debt in a reasonable time period, we help them to put in place other appropriate solutions that may range from insolvency-based approaches or negotiating final settlements with their creditors, through to advising them on mortgages or equity release.
Where people have other vulnerabilities along with their debt, as they often do, we provide additional support and collaborate with other charities and agencies to try to ensure that clients get the holistic help they need.
Whatever solution people choose, we are always available to support them on an ongoing basis. We recognise in turn the emotional impact on our own advisors of the work that they do, and ensure we support them too.
We undertake research and use evidence from our clients’ experiences to campaign for legislative, regulatory and policy changes to reduce the harm caused by debt and reduce the risk of problem debt occurring in the future.
We offer early intervention services to help people address financial difficulty at an earlier stage before it becomes a serious problem. We see these as vital to achieving an effective service that is mindful of prevention as well as cure.
Our back story
StepChange was set up more than 27 years ago as the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. It was based on the growing recognition that people in debt often owed money to multiple creditors, and that attempting to deal individually with each was problematic. The idea was to provide a simple mechanism for people in debt to make one payment, which the charity would then distribute on a fair basis agreed with creditors. In recognition of the value of this service, those creditors who received payments through this mechanism were invited to contribute a voluntary proportion of the payments distributed to them (“Fairshare”) to help fund the charity.
This model still underpins a significant proportion of the charity’s operations today. Yet StepChange has evolved to provide a wider range of services, to a far higher number of people, recognising the changes in the debt landscape that have occurred and continue to occur. Now, more of our clients are in lower income households, and the kinds of debts they experience often include utility bills, rent arrears, council tax and other non-borrowing related debts, as well as credit. So we are constantly looking to the future to evolve how we provide services of the right kind efficiently and effectively to everyone who needs our help.
Reflecting this, the charity now also operates under more diverse funding streams which we are seeking to develop further. As well as the Fairshare funding stream provided by creditors, the charity also gains funding via the Westminster and devolved national governments to support its debt advice activities, and ad hoc project-based funding and corporate donations. The charity does not raise funds from members of the public.