Our Approach

CAP has built up a strong track record, particularly in terms of:

• pioneering work in enabling the voices of people in poverty to be heard;
• producing accessible and reliable information and educational materials;
• high-profile campaigning and lobbying with and on behalf of the churches;
• a strong reputation within and beyond the churches;
• a solid base of members, supporters and core funding;
• an expanding, experienced and dedicated staff team.

Working in partnership with churches and other organisations

A key role for CAP is to influence the understanding, priorities and agendas of churches and church agencies, both at a national and local level:

• CAP is a Body in Association with Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), and was invited by CTBI to undertake the follow up to the 1997 Churches' Enquiry into Unemployment and the Future of Work.
• Since 1988, CAP has convened a bi-annual meeting of Christian agencies concerned with social justice issues which in 1990 led to the establishment of the Churches National Housing Coalition, now re branded as Housing Justice after a merger Catholic Housing Aid Society
• CAP and Christian Aid launched a formal three-year partnership programme "Christians and Poverty" in 1997, to explore the links between poverty in the UK and the Southern hemisphere.
• The Church of Scotland, on behalf of Action of the Churches Together in Scotland, seconded a Linkworker to Church Action on Poverty in 1998, to coordinate the Scottish leg of CAP's Pilgrimage Against Poverty.
• Numerous churches and Christian agencies worked together with CAP to produce our Just Church programme in 2007.
  

CAP also places great importance on working with secular partner agencies to develop a more powerful national voice on poverty issues:

• CAP was a founder member of the Real World Coalition in 1996. Real World brings together over 30 national agencies, committed to environmental, economic, democratic and international justice.
• CAP was instrumental in establishing the UK Coalition Against Poverty during the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty (1996).
• CAP helped to establish the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty, which is unique in Westminster in enabling people in poverty to engage directly in dialogue with MPs and Government Ministers.
• CAP is a founder member of GET FAIR, a coalition of over 60 charities, faith groups and other organisations calling on all political parties to commit to ending UK poverty by 2020.
• CAP's Living Ghosts campaign is part of the Still Human Still Here coalition, which brings together many agencies calling for an end to the Government policies which make people seeking asylum destitute.