Pride Month 2025: National Debtline partners with The What? Centre

This Pride Month, National Debtline is proud to spotlight one of its service partners, The What? Centre.

Posted June 4, 2025

Operating for close to 40 years, The What? Centre is a dedicated counselling service for children and young people, with offices based in Stourbridge and Dudley in the West Midlands.

The Dudley office is home to the BeeHIVe project, which provides support groups for adults aged 18 and over. These include a group for people living with HIV, an LGBTQ+ group, and a Gay Men’s Group. The team carries out regular outreach drop-ins at local colleges and community venues, offering free STI testing, condoms, and education on safer sex.

In addition, The What? Centre runs LGBTQ+ support groups for young people aged 13–18. The advice service helps these groups with a range of issues including housing, benefits, foodbank vouchers and mental health struggles.

As a fellow organisation based in the West Midlands, National Debtline is especially proud to support vital local organisations like The What? Centre.

The partnership with The What? Centre means that anyone in touch with the organisation who is struggling with debt issues can be signposted to National Debtline for further specialised support.

Paula Bache, Advice & Sexual Health Worker from The What? Centre says,

“We are so pleased to have partnered with National Debtline. One of our priorities at The What? Centre is to provide holistic mental health and wellbeing support to the people we help. When someone is struggling with an issue like debt, it is great to be able to refer them to a local organisation for the practical advice they need alongside wellbeing support from us.”

Jonathan Kissun, Debt Advice Partnerships Executive from National Debtline says,

“We know that many people in debt find it hard to make the first step towards getting help because it can cause feelings of isolation, shame and fear, particularly if debt is one of many things impacting them.

“Our recent research found that after speaking to our advisers, four in five National Debtline callers (91%) saw their debts reduce or stabilise and three in four (72%) reported a positive impact on their emotional and mental wellbeing.

“We are proud to partner with The What? Centre so that together we can support more people to remove problem debt from their lives.”