The Lido Foundation is an anchor organisation for many of our users; we have over nine years of trusted relationships with local communities. We are often the first point of contact for many of our users. Our welfare and housing community advisors are from our primary beneficiaries’ communities with a deep level of lived experience; also, half of our trustees are service users, bringing lived experience to our strategic directions.

We have been providing effective housing advice, financial advice, and support to local residents to enable them to understand and exercise their legal rights and entitlements. We are mainly working with BAME communities, but not exclusively, as our services are open to all. Due to the cost-of-living crisis, our users have increased, and we have seen people in desperate situations who had to make difficult decisions to get food on the table for their families or to heat their homes. Our users are mainly black women, who are one of the lowest socioeconomic groups in the UK.