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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 28, 2011
Contact:
Joseph Rendeiro
(202) 776-1566
jrendeiro@nclr.org
Housing and social service professionals among participants expected at counseling training
Washington, D.C.—To combat systemic barriers that prevent low-income individuals from receiving crucial financial counseling, the NCLR (National Council of La Raza) Homeownership Network Learning Alliance (NHNLA) will begin offering a financial training course to housing counselors and social service case managers who frequently work with this community. “Introduction to Client Counseling for Low-Income Families” is a three-day course designed to teach social service professionals the fundamentals of financial counseling, while training them in the one-on-one counseling approach. The new course was developed in conjunction with the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE), whose mission is to empower individual and family financial decision-making through every stage of life.
“We’re working with professionals who offer low-income families assistance with issues such as housing, daycare, adoption, and workforce development, and giving them the skills to address the financial issues that often intersect with the services that they provide,” said Lautaro “Lot” Diaz, Vice President of Housing and Community Development at NCLR. “By training people who are already trusted advisors in their communities, we can more effectively reach individuals, make them more financially savvy, and help them make sound financial decisions.”
Topics covered in the training include barriers to increasing wealth faced by low-income clients, the financial counseling process, client goal-setting and relationship-building, and developing a financial plan. The course also provides essential information about savings strategy, client income analysis, and filing taxes.
“This is a unique strategy to broadly address the inability to get financial information out to low-income families,” said Diaz. “We’re serving them directly and enabling counselors to tailor their assistance to exactly what their clients need.”
The first two courses will be offered in Los Angeles, Calif., and in Pittsburgh, Pa., in August and September respectively. The course costs $800, and a limited number of scholarships are available to participants. For more information about the course and available scholarships or to register, please visit the NHNLA website.
NCLR—the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States—works to improve opportunities for Latinos. For more information on NCLR, please visit www.nclr.org, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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