Helen Ganney, Relationship Manager at CAP, shares her highlights from the 2026 Insight Day.
Every organisation has its key values. They’re usually aspirational and designed to make you feel that we’re all in this together.
Examples I’ve seen over the years range from bizarre — ‘bite the strawberry’ or ‘think like an octopus’ to the vague ‘we empower you’, to the vaguely ominous ‘remember who’s watching you’ or ‘have a warrior mindset.’
CAP is no different, but we hope that our values are meaningful and achievable. In 12 years here, I’ve never been invited to think like an inhabitant of the local aquarium.
One of CAP’s core values is ‘We are collaborative,’ and it’s something I see daily being played out across the UK, where we partner with churches to bring debt advice, job clubs, life skills, money coaching, and hope to local communities.
But nowhere have I seen collaboration play out like we did at our recent Insight Day, where we invited members of the credit and enforcement sector, along with utilities, regulatory bodies, other advice agencies, non-profits and trade associations to join us here at our Central Support Hub in Bradford — Jubilee House.
We’re celebrating a big anniversary for CAP in 2026. It’s 30 years since our Founder, John Kirkby, set out to change lives and release people from the weight of poverty.
Since then, we’ve stepped into around 100,000 homes for the first time, and seen half a billion pounds worth of debt repaid or written off. So we had to celebrate in style.
The amazing Sharon, who has shared her story for our 2026 client report, spent the day with us and cut our birthday cake, leaving barely a dry eye in the room as she recounted how she accumulated the debt, and how working with CAP has led to her being more than debt free. You can read her story in our latest client report, and you can download it here.
Over the course of the day, we heard from CAP staff who reflected on how far we’ve come, and the challenge that lies ahead of us as the cost of living continues to rise, and outstrips any increase in incomes. We heard from our partners Inicio, who shared the innovations that help support CAP as we continue to reach out to people who need CAP’s unique debt management model.
In the panels, we discussed the Financial Inclusion Strategy — and how we put into practice the strategy, including questions like ‘are there any key areas we need to focus on particularly?’. We then spoke about essential bills in our second panel of the day, where we discussed and heard about innovation and social tariffs to help those who are currently entrenched in debt.
We were delighted to welcome several guest panelists join us for the panels from UK Finance, We are Group, Turn2us and CAP. For the second panel on Essential Bills, panelists joined us from Fuelbank FoundationAnd sessions on how CAP is looking after our most vulnerable clients, sharing how we take the extra time that some people need, and relentlessly support them as they meet their goal of being debt-free. Less emotional, but absolutely fascinating, was the session on how CAP is harnessing innovation to bring efficiencies without affecting the client experience.
Even Martin Lewis MBE joined in, sending an encouraging message via video to share his good wishes on our anniversary.
Over a fantastic Bradford curry, conversations continued, relationships were formed, and deepened. Our delegates got a chance to speak with CAP staff in our Biz Bar area, where there was a real buzz about the day.
With so many people in one space, it soon got very warm. But it couldn‘t match the genuine warmth that was generated from being present as we all came together to celebrate the power of collaboration.
We kept telling our guests, ‘We couldn’t do this without you.’
And no one needed to think like a marine animal to do it.
