The Money Advice Support Programme

Advice NI champions the need for advice services so people can improve their quality of life by accessing their rights and entitlements. Advice NI provide specialist advice, training, quality assurance, and policy working with 57 member organisations. In addition, Advice NI provides advice directly to the public through their Welfare Changes, Tax & Benefits and Debt helplines. In one year alone Advice NI supports 234,659 enquiries, most of which related to welfare benefits.

“We work directly with vulnerable clients on a daily basis providing advice on tax & benefits, money & debt and universal credit. Many clients have difficulty budgeting their money and tracking their expenditure which leads to overspending, indebtedness, stress and poor health. We applied to the Techies In Residence programme proposing a spending tracker tool to address this issue by helping people improve their money management skills and know-how and where to seek debt advice if they need it.”

“Throughout the duration of the programme, we worked closely with our techie Declan, from Metadeck and the Community Foundation team to explore possible tech solutions identifying the challenge and centre the final idea on the experience and insight of the user. During a 12 week ‘residency’ we received expert mentoring, guidance and advice on project design, development producing a working prototype of our Money Advice Support Programme service.”

Fiona Magee, Deputy Chief Executive, Advice NI