Description of the programme

Mary Ward Legal Centre is an independent advice centre and registered charity based in Holborn in London. The focus of this project, which started in April 2017, was the financial capability needs of individuals with English as a second language (ESOL). This group consists of foreign adults, including ESOL students and economic migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. They are usually on low incomes and lack confidence when both speaking in English and dealing with financial matters. The project aimed to create financial capability training materials to improve the financial health of these people, as well as making the materials available to different community organisations and advice centres, to help them also engage more effectively with the ESOL group.

The study used mainly qualitative research methods, with the main research question being:

• How can we develop financial capability resources for people who have English as a second language?

The study

The participant sample for the pilot workshops was made up of ESOL students in London. These students were recruited via the Mary Ward Adult Education Centre, which gave access to their ESOL coordinator and students.

The research comprised of:

• Textual analysis, which mapped existing ESOL financial capability resources;
• Interviews;
• Focus groups and consultations (with a total of 17 students);
• Case studies;
• Participant observation;
• Baseline and post-intervention surveys, as well as follow-ups after six weeks;
• An ‘end survey’ for front line workers.

Note that some of the above were developed as part of the programme, and as such did not form part of the evaluation. There were 52 beneficiaries of the pilot workshops. The surveys were answered by 34 participants at the baseline; 15 participants following the intervention, and eight participants after six weeks. Due to these low numbers any findings from these surveys must be treated with extreme caution.

Key findings:

The evaluation identifies the following key findings:

• The review of existing resources showed that there were hardly any resources devoted to ESOL learners. The most relevant resource discovered was a toolkit developed by the Citizens Advice Bureau in 2015, helping ESOL clients with financial capability issues.
• The consultations and focus groups helped develop a list of key topics for the workshops:
• Bills;
  • Budgeting and planning;
  • Debt;
  • Payslips (including taxation);
  • Borrowing;
  • Welfare benefits.
• Six ESOL Money Skills workshops were developed, and one training course on financial capability for frontline workers dealing with ESOL clients. As a result of the consultations it was decided:
• PowerPoint presentations that contained minimal text were an effective way of presenting information;
  • The sessions needed to be interactive;
  • Hand-outs were important so the participants could digest the information at home;
  • To strike a delicate balance between financial and language learning;
  • To develop simplified versions of resources and avoid jargon;
  • To aim to develop ‘dateless’ materials that don’t require constant updating.
• Taster sessions were delivered to test the materials, with key findings being:
• Course length needed to be flexible, and tailored to the level of English spoken by participants;
  • Increasing the amount of English language, as opposed to financial, content;
  • Numeracy skills were low, and many participants could not use calculators.
• While there are insufficient numbers for the results to be indicative of more general trends, all of the 15 participants who answered the post-intervention survey stated that they knew how to do their monthly budget, and that they now knew which bills were high priorities. In addition, 13 participants understood the consequences of not paying priority bills.
• Frontline workers attending the training session reported that their ability to deal with ESOL clients had improved.

Points to consider:

• Due to these workshops being pilots the sample size for assessing the impacts is very small, while no significance testing has been performed so we do not know if the results are statistically significant.
• This small sample size impacted upon the level of analysis that could be conducted. The findings, therefore, are indicative of the perspectives and experience of ESOL workshop participants, and not the overall ESOL population.

• This report is relevant to all stakeholders and policymakers with an interest in financial capability interventions and financial education among vulnerable people, particularly those with English as a second language.

• The research, while thorough, is based on small numbers in one geographic region of the United Kingdom. Combined with the lack of statistical testing, its findings cannot be readily generalised to the rest of the UK without considerable further research.