Johnny Timpson (pictured) and a group of high profile of authors have combined to a launch a guide aimed at identifying the support advice firms can give disabled consumers and people in vulnerable situations.
This paper has been written by a group of authors who have been involved in work on support needs, vulnerability, and disability over the last decade and it is supported and distributed by the Money Advice Trust and WhatWeNeed.Support, from where it can be freely downloaded.
100 different types of support
Help! What support can firms give disabled consumers and people in vulnerable situations? lists more than 100 different types of support that disabled and vulnerable consumers often need firms to meet.
The guide aims to provide a starting point – rather than a final word – for firms to learn from, build upon, and improve their approach to supporting customers.
It has been written to help essential services provide the support that disabled or vulnerable consumers need, for customers to tell more of their providers about their support needs, and for regulators to understand the actions needed within and across sectors to achieve this.
The authors said they plan to publish further updated and expanded editions of the guide throughout 2025 and beyond.
They added this guidance was a ‘living document’ and an important part of the plan includes encouraging disabled and vulnerable consumers to continue to identify and describe more support needs, reasonable adjustments, and systems changes.
Easing access
It identifies support as any action that assists or makes it possible for a consumer to access, use, and benefit from an essential service, overcome any practical barriers to achieving this and avoid preventable harm from using the service or its products.
This includes the support directly given by frontline and field-based staff during individual interactions to meet a consumer’s needs, resolve problems, and avoid future difficulties.
But it also includes the conscious design of an essential service’s journeys, products, communications, and systems in ways that help and support their disabled and vulnerable consumer-base to equally access and use these like any other consumer.
Timpson, who is patron of the Vocational Rehabilitation Association UK and chairman of Morgan Ash, and his fellow authors, have contributed to this paper in an independent capacity.
