In Depth:  social action

Luke Randall

A new Christians in Care (CIC) network has been launched to ‘connect Christians working across the care sector in the UK’.

The network was launched by elderly-care charity, Pilgrims’ Friend Society, and their website details how the network enables Christians working in the care sector to join WhatsApp groups and meet virtually to chat, share, and pray together, seeking to ‘encourage and inspire one another to live and speak for Jesus’.

Luke Randall

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) is offering free budgeting help to struggling families, following the findings of a shocking study on UK poverty.

The charitable organisation, which works to help people in poverty, is training over 900 church volunteers to become ‘money coaches’ enabling them to provide budgeting advice to struggling families in their communities.

Iain Taylor

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) says it is seeing people come to personal faith in Jesus – against a backdrop of a stark poverty crisis in the UK.

In its just-published annual Client Report, the organisation reports that half of CAP clients have attempted or considered suicide; 56% have had to borrow money for food and clothing; 61% could not afford toiletries; two-thirds had fallen behind with one or more household bills; and half of the budgets devised for clients were unsustainable due to their low incomes.

Nicola Laver

The government and UK churches ‘need each other’ to effectively tackle the cost of living crisis, the Evangelical Alliance (EAUK) told parliamentarians in November in Westminster.

The event, The Church’s Response to the Cost of Living Crisis, was held alongside the charity Christians Against Poverty (CAP) to launch the latest Stories of Hope resource

For some guests at London City Mission’s Webber Street day centre, near Waterloo, rehabilitation and restoration is a life-long journey. This is Josef ’s story.

Ten years ago, during the winter that Josef slept on the streets of London, the only way he could find reprieve from the biting cold was by sleeping on the vents that blow warm air out from the Underground.

Nicola Laver

Let no one be left out in the cold. This is the clear message to churches from the new Warm Welcome campaign which is urging them to open up this winter and provide warm shelter for those who cannot afford their energy bills.

The initiative is creating a network of churches and other community spaces to provide warmth for society’s most vulnerable. According to a recent warning from Citizens Advice, a quarter of people in the UK will be unable to afford their energy bills from October – with families, the elderly and the disabled bearing the brunt.

Nicola Laver

Politicians have a moral duty to act, given the ‘shocking’ rises in the energy price cap – and the energy price guarantee for consumers does not go far enough, Christian charities have warned.

CARE – Christian Action Research and Education – said immediate action is needed to protect the vulnerable. It issued the warning just before Liz Truss’ new government was formed in early September, and ahead of another significant rise in fuel price.

Nicola Laver

A warning from charity Crisis UK that hundreds of thousands of UK households could become homeless this winter, has prompted London City Mission (LCM) to issue an urgent call for help.

Figures show that, up to now, good progress had been made with 2,689 fewer people sleeping rough in the year to April 2022 compared to the previous year. An LCM spokesperson said the warning of the impending rise in homelessness is a ‘heartbreaking projection’ threatening the work already done.

Nicola Laver

With modern slavery in the UK escalating, evangelical churches are being challenged to dedicate Sunday 25 September to prayer and taking action to help trafficking victims.

‘Freedom Sunday’, coordinated by the International Justice Mission (IJM), has been chosen as a day dedicated in the UK and abroad for corporate prayer for individuals trafficked into modern slavery – and to take action to end it.

Iain Taylor

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) is highlighting the plight of many less well-off and poorer people in the face of the escalating cost of living crisis.

In an interview with en, CAP Senior External Affairs Manager Rachel Gregory said: ‘There’s been widespread media coverage, so I think everyone is aware of the cost of living crisis. But some may not be aware of how much it is impacting those on the lowest incomes. A fifth of those being helped by CAP have a household income of less than £900 a month. Considering the significant increase in prices for energy, food, and other essentials it’s a very scary time for families living on such low amounts.

For the past nine years, 20schemes has been working to plant and revitalise churches in Scotland’s schemes.

To the rest of the UK they are known as council estates and in the US they are referred to as ‘projects’, but in Scotland they are called ‘schemes’.

London City Mission writes: The cruelty of the pandemic has been that people already struggling have been hardest hit.

It’s those on the margins of society who were more likely to have died or suffered loss from Covid. It’s those living in crowded homes, less able to socially distance, whose low-paid work, if it hasn’t disappeared, has put them more at risk of contracting the virus. And it’s those for whom Covid, far from being a chance to save money, has added costs in the form of additional heating and food. London has been especially hit; reliance on foodbanks has more than doubled in the capital this year.

A new initiative centred on a ‘hospitality pledge’ is encouraging Christians to help refugees and asylum-seekers by welcoming them into their homes if they are able.

The plan is being led by Krish Kandiah, who said: ‘We’re trying to inspire Christians to use their voice and their homes in a way that will be most helpful to a really vulnerable group of people in our society.’

en speaks to Carl Knightly, CEO of Faith in Later Life, which aims to inspire and equip Christians to reach, serve and empower older people in every community, through the local church; and to encourage older people in their faith.

en: How are those supporting older people viewing this past nine months of varying restrictions on our lives?

A leading evangelical expert on ethical issues has said ‘each one of us must do what we feel is right’ when it comes to Covid vaccines.

Professor John Wyatt, Emeritus Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics at University College London and current President of the Christian Medical Fellowship, told en he thought there was ‘a duty of Christian love to be vaccinated … in order to protect my neighbour’.