The Paperweight Trust
Impact Report 2024
The Paperweight Trust
Impact Report 2024
Impact Report
2024
Rules change, lives change…
At Paperweight, we keep on top of the changes
in Government policy and train our caseworkers
so our clients can be helped as effectively
as possible. Over the past year, we have also
witnessed changes which have affected the
middle-income community members the most
and we focussed on these issue with targeted
advertisements and editorial pieces explaining
the Government’s Mortgage Charter and the
options available, following through so that
members of our FCA registered Money Advice
Team were available to guide and advise.
is for
Specific
Before we engage on a star-counting process
we would like to explain how important
Paperweight is to the people we help. To do that
we borrow a well-tried methodology from the
world of business – because, not surprisingly,
more effort has been applied to understanding
how to run businesses and other enterprises
successfully, than to running charities.
Increasingly, in seeking funders who help boost
the income side of our balance sheet, besides
the many thousands of private individuals who
intuitively and generously provide the majority
of our funding, we are asked to show that
Paperweight is S.M.A.R.T.
Absent an answer to any of the following 5
key pointers and the venture will not prosper,
and the consequences for those it serves
and those doing the serving are really quite
terrible. And since our “venture”, Paperweight,
is the enhanced welfare of our clients we take
decisions cautiously but decisively.
Let us conclude this category with a real-life
thank you that exemplifies that Paperweight
are concerned with a specific role. The named
individuals are respectively Harvey the head
of Paperweight’s Debt Management Team
and himself a retired Solicitor and Daniel,
an experienced international business strategist
one of almost 200 volunteers who fill various
critical roles. The client was a highly educated
lady battling with her husband’s rapidly
degenerating dementia:
This is once case amongst thousands.
Over the last few months I have had
tremendous support and help, first from
Harvey and more recently from Daniel.
They have been wonderful. I was completely
overwhelmed by the prospect of taking
responsibility for our financial afairs from
my husband (who has dementia) but Harvey
and Daniel gave me support and, better,
enabled me to get to the point where I think
I understand things better and, hopefully,
can take things forward myself in the future.
I don’t know how to begin to thank all of you.
What a tremendous charity you run!
Thank you – all of you – for all you do.
Paperweight’s role in the community is clear.
Active crisis management for those whose
circumstances has pushed them past the tipping
point. There are three strands but because lives
are complicated they overlap, and although many
of our partner organisations cater for their own
defined sectors, it is Paperweight that applies
an holistic approach and has the resources and
methodology to actually remove or minimise
the cause of the crisis. The three main areas are
Finance and Debt, Legal – particularly Abuse
& Family Law and Social Welfare and Benefits.
Had Abraham has a telescope he would have
seen that some of the stars came in pairs or even
clusters. So too, within these three areas there
are of course specialist situations that fall within
that overall description but require a different
approach. Examples are:
• Elder Care with issues of mobility, affordability,
control of health decisions , incapacity.
• Marriage breakup bring homelessness, Family
Courts hearings, financial arrangements, access
to children.
• Getting the correct entitlements assessed
and made concrete, against a background of
Local Authority reluctance and bureaucracy,
PIP (or other) assessments and the behemoth
that is Universal Credit.
In all these areas and more Paperweight’s teams
will rapidly determine what can be achieved,
what steps must be taken by the client and
what the specific remedy is. To attain this first
goal Paperweight has a well-defined structure
so everyone knows what they can and should
be doing. And in our training we explain why
we have these processes and what they are
designed to do.
God has promised Abraham that his
descendants will flourish:
And He took him outside, and He said,
“Please look heavenward and count the
stars, if you are able to count them.
Genesis 15.5.
This instruction reinforces behaviour that has
come to define our age. If we want to value
something we seem to have to count it.