Vulnerable circumstances training
A one-day, in-depth course built for customer-facing and commercial teams. It is designed to support the standards your sector holds you to — including the international consumer vulnerability standard ISO 22458, the Equality Act 2010, and the expectations your own regulator sets for customers in vulnerable circumstances.
Practical. Plain-spoken. Built around real situations from your own work.
One-Day Vulnerability Management Course
What this training equips your team to do
Commercial work puts your people in front of customers at every kind of moment — including the hard ones. Vulnerability shows up when someone is dealing with loss, money worries, ill health or a sudden change, and the systems around them were not built with that moment in mind.
This is common in situations involving bereavement, financial difficulty, disability, or people in crisis.
A team that can recognise these moments and respond well is the team that keeps customers safe, and keeps your service fair and efficient.
Regulators across sectors now expect this. And the people you serve probably need that support today.
33 countries reached
2,100 organisations supported
8,400 professionals trained
Advising the people who set the standards.
Matt Radford (Director of Vulnerability Managers) is Deputy Chair of the CIOF Professional Conduct Committee, sits on the DMA Governance Committee, leads vulnerability on the DMA AI Council, and is a member of the AFP IDEA Committee.
The frameworks taught on this course are the same ones taught to the Fundraising Regulator, the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association of New Zealand, and the Data and Marketing Association.
Vulnerability Managers has advised six major regulators and professional bodies on professional ethics, marketing, and vulnerability management — helping shape the frameworks that organisations are now audited against.
Fundraising Regulator (UK)
Chartered Institute of Fundraising (UK)
Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (New Zealand)
Federation of European Data and Marketing (Europe)
Data and Marketing Association (UK)
Association of Fundraising Professionals (USA)
One-day agenda
A six-and-a-half-hour day, run as five sessions with breaks. Timings flex to suit your team's working hours.
The day can start later, finish earlier, or split across two half-days.
The outline below is the version teams ask us for most often.
Session 1, Foundations.
What we mean by "people in vulnerable circumstances”, and the four main types of vulnerability.
Session 2 — The 'Before, During, After' model
What to setup before communicating with a customer.
What to do when you are in that moment.
What to follow up afterwards — recording, signposting, and looking after yourself.
Session 3 — Codes and regulators
ISO 22458, the Equality Act 2010, and the rules your own sector regulator sets.
How "good outcomes" duties — such as FCA Consumer Duty for financial firms — apply to customers in vulnerable circumstances.
Session 4 — Live case workshop
Your team's own examples, talked through with our trainer.
Session 5 — Embedding what you have learned
Escalation routes that fit your real workflow.
Where the work goes next — supervision, peer review, and signposting for customers who need more than your team can give.
Optional - Recommended
Lived experience co-delivery
The most consistent piece of feedback on our training is the effect of hearing directly from people with lived experience of vulnerability.
A trainer can describe a situation. A lived experience specialist can describe what it actually felt like to be on the other side of the call or the counter. That shifts how a team thinks about its own practice. Lived experience specialists are paid, integrated, and treated as colleagues — not as case studies.
Lived experience co-delivery is available for this course, depending on how much of the day the specialist is involved in.
We choose the specialist from Vulnerability Managers' partner network to match your team's focus — for example, a specialist with relevant lived experience where your team handles complaints or financial hardship. We agree this during scoping.
Pricing
Single fixed price per session, and includes up to 20 people, 6.5 hours training (in person or online) and a 30 minute individual session with each attendee for personal development after the session.
Discounts are available for smaller organisations, groups and different formats. Contact us for more details. All prices exclude VAT.
One-day course (up to 20 people) - £8,850
Lived experience co-delivery (optional) - Starting from £1,500
Ready to talk about your organisation?
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