Managing Financial Expectations

In our experience, one of the things that comes as a shock to sponsored families is how little money they have to live on in the UK. They often do not seem to be prepared for the fact that our welfare system is not generous and is geared towards 'making work pay'. 

It is very likely that the family will have to survive on their benefit income for many months as poor English skills often initially rules out finding work. Even if they do find employment, sadly, there are chances it may be exploitative work.

Finding sustainable employment at decent pay levels requires a reasonable level of fluency in English. Thus, you should be encouraging the adults to concentrate on learning English as a top priority.

Attached - Managing Financial Disappointment

Attached - Budget Template (English and Arabic)

Your Role In The Budget

As we have mentioned before, your Group should not be subsidising the living costs of the family through cash payments. You may decide to help towards rental costs, but that is a different matter. Your role when it comes to living costs is to help the family manage with the income they have and budget accordingly. 

Exactly how much this income will be will only become totally clear once the family is in receipt of their benefits, and this can take a few weeks after arrival. But someone in your Group needs to sit down with the family members and go through their total income, after rent is deducted, and set this against their anticipated expenditure.