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Financial Abuse Support Toolkit

We have been working with 1800 Respect who have produced this fantastic toolkit.

What is Financial Abuse?

Financial abuse is a form of domestic and family violence and is also sometimes referred to as economic abuse.

Financial abuse can include a variety of things, like controlling and preventing your access to money, forcing you to get loans you don’t want or preventing you from getting a job.

Financial abuse can also occur with other forms of violence and abuse. Financial abuse is not OK. There is support is available to you.

Financial abuse: What does it look like?

Participants in this video are discussing the effects of financial abuse.

Three women who lived with the experience of financial abuse discuss their personal experiences. They discuss their situations pre and post the abuse taking place. Clinical Engagement Manager from 1800 Respect, Inez Carey summarises what financial abuse may look like, and how to reach out for support.

What are the warning signs?

A warning sign common in financial abuse is exclusion from financial decision making as well as exclusion from access to information regarding your or your household’s income.

There will be a pattern to the behaviour where it happens several times. Although you may not be aware of how it began it is common to get progressively worse over time. Sometimes other types of abuse may be happening at the same time. If financial abuse is used to control or scare you, it is a form of family and domestic violence and is not OK.

Who can experience it?

Financial abuse can happen to anyone, regardless of ethnic background, gender age, ability, or wealth. Even if you are separated or divorced it can happen at any time of a relationship.

It is common for those who have experienced financial abuse to also experience domestic and family violence.

Who is responsible for financial abuse?

Financial abuse may happen in any relationship, this includes with:

Husbands, Wives, Boyfriends, Girlfriends or Partners
Ex-husbands, ex wives, ex boyfriends, ex girlfriends.
Carers or paid support workers
Adult Children
Parent, Guardian or other family memebr
Other people you live with or see often, whether inside or outside the home.

These people don’t have the right to force or pressure you into controlling your finances or your belongings.

Financial abuse might include someone:

Stopping you from accessing finances with are yours
Making you pay for things you don’t need or want
Forcing or pressuring to give money to them or others
Taking or controlling your pension, pay or benefits
Making you give them control into your money, payments bank accounts or property
Not giving you access to your own bills, loans or bank account statements (or online banking applications)
Pressuring or forcing you to sell your possessions or even your property
Taking or selling belongings or property without your approval
Pressuring or forcing you to sign legal documents that gives someone the ability to control your money, property or financial decisions
Running debts or taking out loans in your name
Not allowing you to use joint bank accounts for household expenses
Stopping or interfering with your work or search to look for work
Stopping or interfering with your education or your ability to go to school
Forcing you to work and not letting you access your earnings
Not allowing you to pay for essentials you may need such as food, medicine or disability related equipment
Refusing to use their income to help with supporting you and your children (when they are the partner or parent of your children) or contributing to household expenses
Hiding money and assets
Financial abuse can be a form of domestic or family violence. If you or know someone who may be experiencing financial abuse it’s OK to as for help and support

By Fiona Bawden, Times Online (8th May 2007)

“Steve Connor, a student at City Law School, is a man on a mission. Six years ago he was a fairly directionless 27-year-old. Today, as well as taking the Bar Vocational Course, he is chairman of the National Centre for Domestic Violence, a ground-breaking organisation that he dragged into existence after a friend could not get legal help to protect her from an abusive partner.

Connor’s route to the Bar has been circuitous. In 2001 he returned from a year in Australia (he says that he would not dignify describing it as a gap year), and took a job as a process server in South London. The job (“I just saw it advertised in the paper”) was not quite as dull as it sounds. On one occasion he was threatened with a machete, on another, he was nearly stabbed by a man he had arranged to meet on Clapham Common to serve with a non-molestation order: “He’d seemed really friendly on the phone…”

The turning point in his life came when a friend, who was being abused by her partner, turned to him for support. Connor went with her to the police. She did not want to press criminal charges so the police suggested that she visit a solicitor to take out a civil injunction. “We must have seen 12 solicitors in a morning. We just went from one to the next to the next to the next. Everyone was very eager to help until we sat down to fill in the forms for the legal aid means test,” he says. The woman, who had a small child, did not qualify for public funding. But, Connor says, her financial situation as it appeared on paper did not bear any relation to her financial situation in reality. “She had a part-time job and she and her partner owned their home. Yet she didn’t have any money. Her boyfriend was very controlling and controlled all the money; he kept the chequebooks and didn’t let her have access to the bank account.”

The injustice of the situation got under Connor’s skin. “I just couldn’t believe that there was no help available to people who did not qualify for public funds but could not afford to pay.

I just kept feeling that this must be able to be sorted if only someone would address it.”That “someone” turned out to be him.

In 2002, thanks entirely to Connor’s doggedness, the London Centre for Domestic Violence was formed. It started out with him and a friend, but is now a national organisation, covering 27 counties, and has helped approximately 10,000 victims last year to take out injunctions against their partners.

NCDV now has nine full-time staff, 12 permanent volunteers and has trained over 5000 law and other students as McKenzie Friends to accompany unrepresented victims into court. We have also trained over 8000 police officers in civil remedies available regarding domestic violence. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) has branches in London, Guildford and Manchester and is on track to have branches in 16 areas within the next two years.

NCDV specialises exclusively in domestic violence work and could be characterised as a cross between McDonald’s and Claims Direct. The high degree of specialisation means that its processes are streamlined: clients can be seen quickly and the work is done speedily and cheaply. “Sometimes, we will have one of our trained McKenzie Friends at a court doing 10 applications in one day,” Connor says.

Clients are not charged for the service. NCDV staff take an initial statement: clients who qualify for legal aid are referred to a local firm; those that don’t get free help from the centre itself. It runs on a shoestring, heavily reliant on volunteers and capping staff salaries at £18,000 a year.

Steve expects to qualify as a barrister this summer and hopes that having a formal legal qualification will give the centre added clout. “We are already acknowledged as experts and consulted at a high level, so I thought it would be helpful if I could back that up by being able to say I’m a barrister,” he says. He is just about to complete a one-year full-time BVC course at the City Law School (formerly the Inns of Court Law School) and, all being well, should be called to the Bar in July. Although Connor sees his long-term future as a barrister, he says that he has no immediate plans to practise. “I want to get NCDV running on a fully national level. Then I may take a step back and have a career at the Bar.”