Strategy executive summary

When the Suffolk Coastal Debt Centre (SCDC) was founded in 2018, working with clients to alleviate their debt was enough to set them on the path to wellbeing. Progressively, over the last seven years, the characteristics of our service users have changed and the majority now exhibit a number of causes of poverty which compound to make freeing them from poverty a much more challenging task. As an organization, we have adapted to meet this more complex environment by providing a number of other services and activities not directly related to debt.

Our revised strategy, our new name – Suffolk Coastal Poverty Action (SCPA) – and our changed organisational structure not only reflect this change but put us on a pathway to evolve into a much broader anti-poverty charity over the next five years or so. Rather than dealing primarily with debt, a symptom of poverty, we will seek to help people overcome the compound causes of poverty as well as its effects, hopefully leading to a greater sense of wellbeing. Some of these causes are very intractable and some (not necessarily the same ones) require dedicated technical expertise that we are unlikely to be able to provide. However, by effective triage we aim (already) to understand and support service users holistically and we will be seeking to augment our range of support as well as to signpost more effectively to partner organisations which have the necessary competencies to help those in need.

The recognition of a need to revise our strategic orientation will necessitate a number of changes to SCPA. These include changing our:

• Relationships – especially with clients, volunteers and other stakeholders;
• Resourcing – our people and our finances;
• Referral structure – how we interact with those who refer service users to us;
• Regulatory procedures – how we ring-fence regulated activities;
• Recognition – how we are perceived by others;
• Review – how we learn and optimise our activities;
• Registration – whether we need to register as an independent charity.

The Powerpoint and the document found here set out this logic and its consequences in detail.