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Spotting signs and avoiding financial abuse

Spotting signs and avoiding financial abuse

Date posted:
5th November 2021
Spotting signs and avoiding financial abuse
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Jeanette is a Welfare Benefit & Money Advice Office.

As a Money Advisor I have worked with customers experiencing severe financial hardship. I often hear comments such as: “I don’t know where all my money goes”,I just don’t have money to buy food”, or even comments such as “Oh my partner deals with all our money”. Often there is nothing suspicious or worrying about these comments and help and advice can be provided to help enable better budgeting skills allowing people to get back on track with finances. 

However, statements like these should not be dismissed or ignored as they can often be the first signs of financial or economic abuse. These statements might be the start of the person affected bravely reaching out to try to get some help and support. 

People who financially abused are often related or close friends of the person who is affected; they are not all professional fraudsters. There may also be other types of abuse involved not just economic.

Often the financial abuse is the tip of the iceberg. The person who is being abused often doesn’t know it is happening due to how they are being controlled. Once they realised what is happening, they can feel trapped and don’t know where to turn. This is where the professional skills of a money advisor can be useful in asking the right questions to discover the support wanted and needed. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, incidences of people being financially abused increased due to personal details being captured or stolen and used by fraudsters to make false Universal Credit claims. There were also incidences of people being persuaded to make a claim for UC so abusers could get access to money, with the person being abused being misled they were being helped.

This type of activity can cause unsurmountable distress to the person affected and take a lot of work to put right. People who are addicted to substances such as alcohol and drugs are often at risk of economic abuse. Signs of financial abuse can be seen from the likes of their bank statements showing transfers of large sums from their wages each month as soon as they get paid. This leaves them with nothing or little to live on and thereby making them even more reliant on asking for financial help from the very people who are abusing them. 

Money advisors can be the eyes and ears in identifying when someone who may be being abused needs support or asks for help.

A good organisation to refer to for further advice and how to identify economic abuse, and to support both the person affected and also the money advisor is: https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/i-need-help/understanding-economic-abuse/spotting-the-signs/

Providing a link for support can often be enough to help someone start to take back control of their finances and break the chain of control that financial abuse creates.

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