Cleveland Housing Advice Centre

The Foundation has always supported community-based organisations that aim to improve the lives of its local people. One of many great examples of this type of work is Cleveland Housing Advice Centre (CHAC). 

CHAC is based in Middlesbrough but supports people across the Tees Valley. The area has very high unemployment, multi-generational poverty and poor mental and physical health outcomes. CHAC offer a range of services to help people improve their circumstances, supporting over 12,500 people every year. Their practical help includes; 

• debt support
• employability work
• literacy and numeracy programmes
• housing advice and advocacy 
• technology skills development 
• one-to-one case work to help people with the benefits system 

CHAC also provides on-the-job training for ex-offenders and young people at risk of offending. When they applied to us, they were set to expand their work into Redcar. They anticipated working with up to 13,000 people as a result.  

CHAC is a founding member of the Middlesbrough Advice Partnership, which brings together a range of statutory bodies and charities. They share best practice, refer clients between services and help develop joint practices to make the best use of their resources.

CHAC included good case studies in their funding application that showed the impact of its work. They clearly set out their anticipated income and expenditure so we could see what their shortfall was likely to be. We could see that CHAC was working hard to both meet local need and to raise funds in a difficult financial environment. We were happy to make a grant to support the charity’s operating/core costs.