.

This is a story from one of our clients in his words. It all started back in Nov 2018. I was off sick from work with depression & anxiety and was feeling suicidal as I could not see any way out of my situation at the time. I was over £25,000 in debt and I was getting phone calls, emails and letters on a daily basis from creditors chasing me for money owed. I was under the care of the local NHS crisis team, who advised me to visit a ‘safe haven’ run by a charity called Mind. I drove down to the Safe Haven on Thorpe Rd, Peterborough one cold, wet evening. There I sat in a quiet, comfortable room with a lady and she listened to me offload all my problems. At the end of this, the lady suggested I contact a charity called Christians Against Poverty as she had known clients who CAP had helped in the past with Debt problems. So the following day, I contacted CAP for the very first time. I can’t remember the exact day but it was in November 2018. I called CAP from home and was told there w...

I originally turned to Christians Against Poverty for help as I had attended a money course and saw how honest and open things were. I felt drawn to CAP and had been following them on Facebook and seen the success. In April 2018 I had a massive mental health breakdown which led to my life falling apart, at the same time I lost sight in one of my eyes and due to all of this I lost my job, family home, and my relationship with my wife broke down and we separated. Now being on benefits I was unable to pay the debt that had grown from a previous period where I had to pay the mortgage with credit cards for 9 months. With my current mental state, I was not allowed to work and had no idea what to do about the debt, so I hid from it and just ignored the letters. It was towards the end of last year that the mental health team pointed out that 1 of the two major issues behind my depression and anxiety was my debt. So, I contacted CAP to see what could be done. Buy this time I was receiving lette...

Three years ago, I split up from my partner and was looking after my 2 children. One was 2 and the other 3, both were my world and I loved them with everything I was. Before the split and the debts, things were hard but everything got paid, the kids were fed and life was ok, not as I always thought my life would be, but it was ok. Then one Sunday afternoon, I found myself in A&E after being severely beaten up and at one point they didn’t think I would pull through. My partner had got drunk and decided to use me a punching bag because I didn’t get him a cup of coffee when he got home. Both the children saw what happened, and this had a lasting effect on them. He was arrested, but that afternoon changed our lives dramatically. It took me at least 6 to 12 months to get back to being well physically, but mentally I was shattered and in pieces. Soon I got behind on the rent, and bills and had bailiffs hounding me from 7 am in the morning till 9 pm at night, both verbally and knocking at...

Before wanting to sort out my debts I used to ignore all the letters that came through the post and used to put them in the cupboard. I thought that by doing that they would just go away. Each time I saw them come through or had a phone call from one of them it made my depression and anxiety even worse. They were constantly ringing me, and I would eventually answer them and agree to any payments they wanted to set up, just so I could get rid of them for a while, but they always tried again. I never went out because I always felt ashamed and just wanted to cut my self off from everyone. I didn’t even tell my family that I had debts, because I was too ashamed and because of the number of tablets I was taking for my depression it made it even worse, I always felt very low and isolated. When I visited other support groups who were helping me, I never told them about my debt and would lie when asked about it. The depression was made worse by the constant problems I had with a neighbour who ...