I Need Something I Can Reference
During fieldwork, a case manager said something that’s stuck with me: “I need something I can reference when I’m trying to figure out where to send clients. Something that explains clearly what different types of financial literacy education address and which populations they serve.”
That’s not a complicated request. It’s a case manager asking for the most basic thing her job requires, clarity about what a program actually does before she refers someone to it. And she doesn’t have it, because the field hasn’t built it.
The first question any educator should ask before teaching financial literacy in a transitional housing setting is embarrassingly simple, and almost never asked out loud: is this learner currently facing housing crisis, or are they stably housed? That single question should determine nearly everything about what gets taught next. Crisis-informed content for one. Generic financial literacy for the other. Right now, most programs skip the question entirely and teach the same content to everyone who walks in the door.
We built our curriculum around asking that question first, every time, before a single lesson plan gets chosen.
If you’re an educator or case manager, is that question, crisis or stability, something your intake process actually asks, or does it just get assumed?
Author: Sandra Roussel
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