Blog
Our blog features stories and ideas from across Dosh about supporting people with money.
We also welcome guest bloggers so if you would like to write something for us, please get in touch!
Delivering Dosh Money Awareness Training
Blog written by Steve Raw, Managing Director of Dosh Sitting in the car park of the venue for today’s Money Awareness Training waiting for the caretaker to arrive, I am thinking about who I will meet and how the workshop will pan out during the course of the day. It is the feeling of excitement […]
March 31st, 2023
Planning for the Future
Many people who have a family member with a learning disability fear what will happen when they are no longer around to care for them. This Blog covers some of the main things you can think about to help prepare for the future. Planning for benefits and banking If […]
January 20th, 2023
Mark’s Story
Earlier in the year, Mark expressed that wanted to replace his trike and discussed the idea with his Dosh Financial Advocate who suggested he visit a supplier for a suitable Trike to get some prices. Whilst shopping around it became clear that he would not be able to fund this solely on his own, but […]
December 6th, 2022
Banking Guide – Part 2
How can I get support with Banking? 1. Tell the bank what support and changes you need to help you. Build up a relationship with your local bank, so that they know you and what you need. 2. Ask what reasonable adjustments they can make, for example, to help you take […]
October 10th, 2022
Being Bettina’s Dad – Being a Carer.
Being Bettina’s Dad – Being a Carer – A blog written by our Managing Director, Steve Raw. This is Bettina. Bettina copes with autism and a learning disability. Bettina is our pride and joy. Dozing on the settee after a hard day’s work my pager started to beep. I woke up and phoned my transport […]
July 27th, 2022
Dosh Banking Guide Part One
In 2014, we created a report called Making Banking Easier. Our report highlighted some of the problems faced by people with a learning disability when banking. It’s now 8 years since we published our report, and people with a learning disability still face many of the same challenges when banking. The advice we gave […]
July 17th, 2022
Dosh Strategy for 2022-23
Dosh Strategy for 2022-23 Dosh’s mission continues to be for people to have more control and independence over their money. More particularly, Dosh’s purpose is to empower, give voice to and enable everyone with a learning disability to be more independent and have more control over their money to live the life they choose. […]
May 4th, 2022
The 3rd Leadership Lesson I learned – Surround yourself with Talent
The 3rd Leadership Lesson I learned – Surround yourself with Talent Standing in front of a room full of colleagues, I am about to open the Dosh (Financial Advocacy) Ltd* conference as we celebrate our 15th Anniversary as a company. * www.dosh.org is a ‘not for profit’ […]
April 12th, 2022
Become a Non-Executive Director with Dosh
Dosh is a specialist company within the Thera Group and provides financial advocacy to people with a learning disability. We were set up to help people with a learning disability to have more control over their own money. We are looking for people with the skills and dedication to help run the organisation as a […]
December 13th, 2021
Values in Action
By Steve Raw, Dosh Managing Director VALUES IN ACTION Introduction I started supporting people with a learning disability 25 years ago. This is my second career. My daughter, Bettina, was 9 years old at the time. Bettina copes with a learning disability, autism, and epilepsy. I knew what my values were (and they haven’t changed) […]
September 30th, 2021
Dosh’s 10 Commitments for 2021/2022
By Steve Raw, Managing Director & Joanne Davies, Charityworks Graduate With the start of the new financial year comes the opportunity to look back on what we achieved in 2020/2021 and to set out what we will set out to do in the coming year. 2020 was a difficult year for everyone, and it was […]
April 6th, 2021
What’s the Difference between Appointeeship and Account Management at Dosh?
By Joanne Davies, Charityworks Graduate When people think of Dosh they often think about our financial advocates who act as financial appointees for the people we support whilst also being an active member of their circle of support. What most people don’t know is that Dosh also offers an account management service. This blog post […]
March 8th, 2021
Working on Benefits
By Meike Beckford, Previous Lead Director Benefits that are not affected Disability Living Allowance (DLA) & Personal Independence Payment (PIP) These are based on care and mobility needs. They are not affected by work. Benefits that are affected Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) “Permitted work” is allowed […]
March 1st, 2021
Self-organising teams
By Meike Beckford, previous Lead Director for Dosh This post builds on a previous post I wrote about self-leadership and here I will take you through an example of how team-level self-leadership (or self-organising teams) can be developed through a model called holacracy. I will share the experiences we have had so far in Dosh […]
February 8th, 2021
Annual Review 2020 Results
By Joanne Davies, Charityworks graduate and Meike Beckford, Lead Director The results are in for the Dosh Annual Review 2020 and they are excellent! We asked all of the people we support, their support staff and families to complete a survey telling Dosh how we did this year. Almost 200 people replied with their […]
December 8th, 2020
Impact, Values and Influence: Our Strategy for 2020-21
By Meike Beckford, Lead Director While we have been busy adapting our support to lockdown conditions with Coronavirus, we’ve been a little quiet on our other projects. We are now lucky enough to have our teams set up to work from home and in between continuing our core payments and advocacy work, we have […]
May 15th, 2020
Benefit rate changes for 2020
By Peter Smith, Financial Advocate and New Business Advocate for Dosh April generally brings a review of benefit rates and this year is no exception. There is some welcome news for working age benefit recipients, and a one-off increase for Universal Credit recipients to reflect the current Coronavirus situation. Pension benefits continue to enjoy the […]
April 28th, 2020
Dosh support for managing your money during Coronavirus (COVID-19)
We have put together some information on how your support from Dosh will operate during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the UK and what we can do to help you buy the things you need. Update 26/10/2020: We are gradually resuming some in person visits to people we support, where necessary. To do this […]
March 17th, 2020
Your Money. Your Way. Dosh’s Financial Capability Workshops
By Michaela Le Bail, Project Manager and Financial Advocate In 2018 Dosh Financial Advocacy received a grant from NatWest to deliver Money Awareness Training throughout the United Kingdom with a focus on the East of England. The training was specifically for people with a learning disability aged between 18 and 30 and we also […]
February 28th, 2020
Dosh Winter Newsletter 2019-20
Welcome to the Dosh Money Pack newsletter for Winter 2019-20! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Grace Sodzi, our Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. If you have ideas for future newsletter pieces, please get […]
January 9th, 2020
Find people who make you better
Dosh’s Managing Director for the past 10 years, Steve Raw, is moving onto a new post within Thera Trust and so we are saying a fond farewell, thank you and good luck to Steve for his leadership at Dosh. Meike Beckford is taking over as Lead Director from 1st November 2019 and is looking forward […]
November 1st, 2019
Summer Newsletter 2019
Welcome to the Dosh Money Pack newsletter for Summer 2019! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Grace Calvert, our Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next one will […]
August 22nd, 2019
Dosh Summer Newsletter 2018
Welcome to the Dosh Money Pack newsletter for Summer 2018! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Lia Herbert, our Dosh Financial Assistant and Meike Beckford, Dosh Financial Advocacy Manager. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a […]
August 2nd, 2018
Getting ready for Universal Credit
By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager for Dosh Universal Credit is replacing some of the main benefits you and people you support receive. There are some things you need to be aware of now and some actions to take to ensure you and the people you support continue to get the right benefits. Ignoring this […]
May 31st, 2018
Vote for Dosh to win funding for a new project!
We are really excited that Dosh has been shortlisted for the Natwest Skills and Opportunities fund! We have applied for funding to run a series of money and life skills workshops to young people with a learning disability. Please vote for us to win in the ‘Midlands and East’ region! Dosh believes that everyone should be able […]
April 6th, 2018
Dosh Newsletter Winter 2018
Welcome to the Dosh Money Pack Newsletter for Winter 2018! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Lia Herbert, our Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next one […]
March 19th, 2018
Dosh’s commitments for 2018-19
Dosh has been putting together our Business Plan for the next year: April 2018 to March 2019. In our plan, we have written 6 commitments: 1. We will show that people with a learning disability can lead our company 2. We will make sure our systems and processes are ready to support more than 1000 people […]
February 16th, 2018
Being an appointee – part 2
By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager for Dosh Here at Dosh, we’ve been thinking about what it means to be an appointee for someone’s benefits. In part 1, we talked about the basics of what you have to do as an appointee. Now, we are going to give you some tips, as well as […]
January 18th, 2018
Being an appointee
By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager Here at Dosh, we’ve been thinking about what it means to be an appointee for someone’s benefits. 100,000s of people across the UK have an appointee, many of whom are family members doing a great job for their relative without any training and only limited information. If you’re just […]
January 8th, 2018
Dosh Newsletter Autumn 2017
Welcome to the Dosh Money Pack Newsletter for Autumn 2017! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Lia Herbert, our new Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next one will […]
December 11th, 2017
Dosh is 10 – love the job you are in
Dosh is 10 years old today! The idea was born in 2007 that there was a different, better way to support people with their money. This focused on financial advocacy and putting people in control of their money and how this affects their lives. From this idea came Dosh. Since starting to support our first […]
November 29th, 2017
Lynn’s story for #FinCap week
This is Part 3 of our series for Financial Capability Week. You can read Part One and Part Two to learn more about the work we are doing in this area. Budgeting can be a really difficult subject for people with a learning disability, as numbers can seem really abstract. It takes a lot of […]
November 17th, 2017
Ben’s story of financial capability
By Maddy Hubbard, Dosh Financial Advocate in the North West Part two of our Financial Capability week series, you can read part one here. Dosh has been supporting Ben for a few years, in which time he has massively built his financial capability. When I first met him, Ben was just getting by on his […]
November 16th, 2017
Building financial capability – the Dosh way
By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager Originally posted at: http://blog.fincap.org.uk/2017/11/15/building-financial-capability-the-dosh-way/ Dosh supports people with a learning disability to be more independent and have more control over their money. For us, this is all about building financial capability, so we wanted to write something for #Fincap week to talk about what we have found that works. […]
November 15th, 2017
Supporting disabled people into work
Although the majority of people with a learning disability want to work, only 20% of working age people with a mild or moderate learning disability and just 6% of people with a severe learning disability are in employment. Compared to 79% of the general population, this means a huge number of learning disabled people are […]
October 12th, 2017
Prepaid Funeral Plans – the pros and cons
From Maddy Hubbard, our Financial Advocate in the North West Around 1.3 million people in the UK have bought prepaid funeral plans, based on the promise that they are fixing their funeral costs at today’s prices. Dosh supports many people who choose to buy funeral plans, so we wanted to do some more research into […]
September 28th, 2017
Dosh Newsletter Summer 2017
We have published the Dosh money pack newsletter for Summer 2017! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Katie Scott, Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next one will […]
September 28th, 2017
Dosh Newsletter Spring 2017
We have just published the Dosh money pack newsletter for Spring 2017! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Katie Scott, Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the full newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next […]
May 3rd, 2017
Interview with award-winning advocate!
By Mike Kitcher, Financial Advocate for East Anglia Our financial advocates work in partnership with over 60 different support providers across the country. One of our advocates in East Anglia, Mike, recently won an award from one of the support providers he works with – Thera East Anglia. The award recognised the great support he providers to […]
April 28th, 2017
Benefit changes 2017-18
Will my benefits change this year? Most benefit amounts have stayed the same for a few years, but from April 2017 some of them will go up. Here is Dosh’s guide explaining the changes: Why do benefit amounts change? The amount that people get in benefits often goes up each year in April because […]
March 28th, 2017
Moving to PIP: our top 5 tips
By Maddy Hubbard, Financial Advocate for the North West Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is a new benefit for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions. Many people currently getting Disability Living Allowance (DLA) are being asked to move to PIP and have to do a new application. We know that it’s not easy making a […]
March 3rd, 2017
Dosh Newsletter Winter 2017
We have just published the Dosh money pack newsletter for Winter 2017! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Katie Scott, Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the Dosh newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next […]
February 7th, 2017
Annual review 2016 results
By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager for Dosh Between March and June 2016 we held an annual review. We asked the people we support and their families, support teams and care managers how we were doing. You can download the Dosh annual review 2016 results and read more about it here. We were really pleased with […]
January 25th, 2017
Myth busting direct payments
By Sam Fiske, former Finance Assistant for Dosh In social care today, there are so many more possibilities for those who receive support than ever before. Today, if you want to have more choice and control in how your support is arranged, you can ask to receive your personal budget from the local authority as […]
January 4th, 2017
What is Financial Advocacy?
By Maddy Hubbard, Financial Advocate for Greater Manchester and the North West Dosh is unique in providing advocacy specifically around money, but many people don’t fully understand what a ‘Financial Advocate’ is or what we do day to day. ‘Advocacy in all its forms seeks to ensure that people, particularly those who are most vulnerable […]
November 29th, 2016
I, Daniel Blake: a financial advocate’s perspective
By Maddy Hubbard, Financial Advocate for Greater Manchester and the North West I, Daniel Blake follows the story of a joiner from Newcastle who has to stop work due to a heart attack and encounters the benefit system for the first time. The film follows Daniel through his “claimant journey” (to use DWP language) of […]
November 7th, 2016
Going the extra mile
Supporting someone to get the Right to Reside By Maddy Hubbard, Financial Advocate for Greater Manchester and the North West James* is a young man with a learning disability that Dosh supports in the South of England. Most of the people Dosh supports have lived in the UK for a long time and are allowed […]
November 3rd, 2016
Dosh Newsletter Autumn 2016
We have just published the Dosh money pack newsletter for Autumn 2016! This edition of the newsletter was put together by Katie Scott, Dosh Financial Assistant. Download the newsletter to read all our updates and tweet us @DoshTweets or contact us to tell us what you think. This is a quarterly newsletter and the next one […]
November 2nd, 2016
Why are we scared of SDS?
By Meike Beckford, Financial Advocacy Manager for Dosh A few weeks ago I attended a Highlands Brokerage Network meeting in Inverness and it got me thinking about self-directed support. We had a great discussion with lots of people from the Local Authority, care providers, advocacy organisations and housing providers with lots of positive ideas and […]
October 20th, 2016
Supporting people to make decisions – What I learnt from buying a car
A few weeks ago on a cold and wet winter’s morning I found myself stood on the side of the A1 next to my rather poorly car, having just broken down. As well as the immediate concerns about getting the breakdown service out, getting my car to the garage and getting to that day’s board […]
September 22nd, 2016