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Those who attended this week’s Maidens session, including volunteers and those seeking advice |
Maidens offer support for the hard-pressed
Mums’ free groundbreaking advice on financial and employment issues every Wednesday
MOTHERS on a King’s Cross estate have set up a groundbreaking project aimed at helping Camden residents with their money and job concerns.
The United Maidens, a group of women from the Maiden Lane estate off Agar Grove, are the driving force behind Money Wednesdays, a weekly session dedicated to guiding people through the thorny subjects of benefits, tax credits and job training.
The sessions are completely free and open to all Camden residents.
With the reading material on tax credits currently 800 pages long and bailiffs an increasingly regular sight on doorsteps, mothers on the estate have been leafletting neighbours and going out on the street to drum up support for their advice sessions.
Pauline Stafford, one of the United Maidens, said: “With the recession and the way everything is, there are a lot of people struggling.
“A lot of the mums thought it would be a good idea to get something positive going on. We all need to manage our money a lot better at the moment.”
Representatives from partner bodies the Camden Citizens Advice Bureau, the Mary Ward Legal Centre and housing, welfare and employment departments of Camden Council are all on hand to share their wisdom at the meetings, in what the mothers have dubbed “joined-up working”.
Mrs Stafford added: “This is a great way for people to ease their financial worries, meet in a social setting, check that they are getting the right benefits or tax credits, learn which bill to pay immediately, manage their money through budgeting, and get help with getting into training, education or employment.”
Expert and confidential advice is available on all topics, whether it is dealing with bailiffs, helping people with disabilities get back to work or sorting out rent arrears.
A free creche is available where mothers can leave their children and there are translation services available for Somali and Bangladeshi speakers. The service has been up and running since the beginning of August.
The United Maidens have also been campaigning intensively to save their youth club in the Maiden Lane Community Centre, for which council officials withdrew funding earlier this year.
Last week it was announced that the council had reconsidered its decision in the face of huge local pressure – more proof that there is nothing the mothers of Maiden Lane cannot do.
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