Scottish Carer's Assistance: consultation

Important things to consider in making decisions about Scottish Carer's Assistance

Our new benefit will replace the existing Carer's Allowance benefit, and will be just one part of a range of support which the Scottish Government and others provide for carers. This means there are a number of things we need to think about in making decisions about how Scottish Carer's Assistance should work in future.

Scottish Carer's Assistance and links with other benefits

The current Carer's Allowance benefit has complex links with other reserved benefits that will still be provided by the Department for Work and Pensions. Many carers who get Carer's Allowance get other linked support which they rely on for basic living costs, for example, extra amounts in benefits such as Income Support. For carers getting Universal Credit, being eligible for Carer's Allowance will also mean there is no requirement to look for work.

We need to work with the Department for Work and Pensions to understand how entitlement to those reserved benefits will be maintained. We want to make sure that people getting Scottish Carer's Assistance will still be able to access extra support from the Department for Work and Pensions in the same way as carers getting Carer's Allowance. We also need to ensure any extra support we provide isn't taken away somewhere else in the benefits system.

Investing in support for unpaid carers

When we make changes to how the current Carer's Allowance benefit works that mean more carers will get our replacement benefit, get higher payments, or get payments for longer, we will need to invest more money from the Scottish Budget to make these changes. Broadly speaking, the money we get from the UK Government to pay Carer's Allowance only covers how the benefit works now. The Carer's Allowance Supplement and Young Carer Grant are two of the seven new and unique benefits we have introduced that are funded entirely from our budget. In 2022/23 the Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast that we will spend £361 million over and above what is estimated to be provided from the UK Government^[25].

Since launch, we have invested over £188 million in Carer's Allowance Supplement^[26], including the extra coronavirus payments in June 2020 and December 2021. In 2021/22 we expect to spend around £60 million^[27]. The costs of Carer's Allowance Supplement are also expected to increase in future years as the number of people who are eligible for Carer's Allowance is expected to continue increasing, and we increase the amount each year in line with rising living costs^[28]. Overall, the total cost of Carer's Allowance and Carer's Allowance Supplement is expected to increase by over £142 million by 2026-27, before any changes are made^[29].

The funding needed for Scottish Carer's Assistance will be forecast by the Scottish Fiscal Commission. The Commission has already estimated that costs of the current Carer's Allowance benefit will increase each year, even without changes to eligibility. This is because the number of people getting Carer's Allowance is expected to increase and the value of support will be increased each year in line with inflation^[30]. It is also expected that replacing Personal Independence Payment with Adult Disability Payment will increase the number of people getting disability benefits, meaning more people will qualify for Carer's Allowance. The combined impacts of this change on Carer's Allowance and Carer's Allowance Supplement are currently expected to need an additional investment of £40 million by 2026/27^[31].

Social security budgets are 'demand led' – so once we have agreed who should be able to get a certain benefit, we will pay any eligible person who applies. To make policy changes that will increase future benefit spending, the Scottish Government would need to find the funding to invest in making these changes. We will need to decide how affordable and sustainable any changes are as part of our wider Resource Spending Review. The review will look at budget plans across government for the next few years to make sure we are spending money where it will best support our core priorities for Scotland, such as tackling poverty.

Equality and human rights

Our approach to social security is that it is a human right, so we are taking a human rights based approach to how we develop and deliver Scottish Carer's Assistance.

We have made sure that carers, organisations that support them and the wider public have been involved in the process that has led to this consultation. The aims and proposals we have set out have been developed from a range of work to learn from carers' experiences of the current benefit and how this could be improved. This consultation, and the events that will be part of it, will continue that work. As with all Scottish benefits, we will involve the people who will get the benefit when we design the detail of how the benefit will work, such as application processes. And in line with the Social Security Charter^[32], this approach will be central to continuing to improve the benefit after launch.

We have also used the equality data available to us to inform decisions on the proposals we have set out in this document. We know the majority of Scotland's unpaid carers are women, as are the majority of people getting Carer's Allowance – currently 69%^[33]. So changes we make to our carer benefits are likely to have more of an impact on women, who already face a gender pay gap^[34] and are more likely to have been affected by previous benefit changes^[35], and by the coronavirus pandemic in multiple ways^[36]. Women are also more likely than men to rely on social security. We also recognise that for some women, Carer's Allowance paid direct to the carer may also be their main or only independent income. We are also aware that people from some ethnic minority communities face additional barriers to getting support for caring roles, and this will need to be considered in how we design and deliver our new support.

In making decisions about changes we also looked at how we could target improvements and support at carers on the lowest incomes or at most risk of poverty. We know that many unpaid carers live with the person they care for and households with a disabled person in them are more likely to be in poverty^[37]. Carer's Allowance recipients are also more likely to be in poverty than the population as a whole^[38]. In considering the impact of policy proposals, it is important to look at the specific group of carers within the overall group who are likely to benefit. In particular, working age carers are more likely to be affected by poverty than carers aged 65 and over^[39].

We know that there are gaps in the information we have about unpaid carers, and specifically those who currently receive Carer's Allowance, or should receive it but don't. We are working with members of our Carer Benefits Advisory Group^[40] and wider organisations to use this consultation process to reach as wide a range of carers and others as possible. We want to improve what we know about how our proposals could impact different groups – and how we could use Scottish Carer's Assistance to reach more carers and to improve equality.

We have plans in place to help us understand the reach and impact of our policies on diverse groups. Social Security Scotland will collect a wider range of equality data for people getting Scottish Carer's Assistance than is currently collected for Carer's Allowance. We are already working to improve our information about people getting Carer's Allowance Supplement through surveys run by Social Security Scotland. We also plan to work with groups of carers we have already identified as having particular barriers to applying for benefits.

We have included some information in this document about how equality and poverty information has shaped our proposals for Scottish Carer's Assistance. We have also provided summary information from the work we have already done for all of our impact assessments as part of developing our plans. We ask for views on equality, poverty and other impacts on pages 47 to 55 and would also welcome views on these for all proposals in this document.

Our aims for Scottish Carer's Assistance

In March 2020, we published a discussion paper on Scottish Carer's Assistance^[41], setting out draft aims for the new support, taking into account the core purpose of the benefit as set out above – to provide replacement income for carers with the most intensive caring roles.

The aims are designed to help contribute to the vision that unpaid carers are 'supported on a consistent basis to allow them to continue caring, if that is their wish, in good health and wellbeing, allowing for a life of their own outside of caring'.

The aims were informed by a range of work with carers and support organisations. This includes feedback from the public consultation on Social Security in Scotland in 2016, and our Experience Panels^[42] - volunteers with experience of the current benefits system. They also reflect the work of the Disability and Carers Benefits Expert Advisory Group^[43], which provides independent expert advice on disability and carer benefits, and work with the Carer Benefits Advisory Group^[44], which involves representatives from the National Carer Organisations^[45], carer services, health and social care, local authorities and welfare advice organisations.

After we published the draft aims, we held events with carer support organisations and others and carried out a small number of interviews with members of our Experience Panels to take feedback. We updated the aims based on this feedback and they are set out below.

A key point raised by carers and organisations was about how the aims would be used. It was felt that the aims could feel very far away from the reality of many carers' lives right now. We plan to use the aims to guide decisions about how the benefit will work in future – and they already have been used to develop options for future changes (set out in section 3) – and to help us assess how well changes have made a difference for carers. So we do know the aims may not reflect what carers' lives are like now. They are there to set out our ambition for what carers lives should be like and how Scottish Carer's Assistance should contribute to making this a reality.

Aim 1. Scottish Carer's Assistance provides income for unpaid carers in recognition of their vital role and its impact on their lives. It is delivered in a way that takes into account that different carers have different needs, and that different caring situations have different impacts.

We know that carers value the acknowledgement Carer's Allowance provides of their caring role and its importance. We also appreciate the importance of the 'income replacement' role of Carer's Allowance. Scottish Carer's Assistance should provide support to carers, with no requirement to work outside of caring, in recognition of the value of what carers do, and its impact on their lives and opportunities.

But no two carers or caring roles are the same. It is important that Scottish Carer's Assistance is designed to work for a range of carers. We know there are concerns that the current support doesn't recognise different caring situations. However, we are also aware of the need to balance any changes with what carers have told us about the importance of clear eligibility criteria and simple processes for receiving support.

Aim 2. Scottish Carer's Assistance provides stability and supports carers to access opportunities outside of caring, where possible, and should they wish to do so.

Carers face a number of pressures in their daily lives. Concerns about how changes in their circumstances may affect their support should not be one of these. Scottish Carer's Assistance should help provide stability through these changes, whether this is to their work, their health, or the situation of the person they care for.

Our analysis has highlighted the importance of supporting carers at key points in their lives. This could be at the beginning of a caring role, the change from being a young carer to an adult carer, moving in or out of education, or when a caring role comes to an end. Scottish Carer's Assistance should do more to connect with wider services to help carers get the support they need at these times.

We have also heard about the value to carers' health and wellbeing of access to opportunities outside of caring, which could be learning, training, employment, or in their community, such as voluntary work. Scottish Carer's Assistance should not be a barrier to this.

Aim 3. Scottish Carer's Assistance is designed to ensure carers have a positive experience of the social security system, and to maximise carers' take-up of all support available to them.

Carers already have busy and demanding lives. In line with Our Charter^[46], applying for and getting support should be simple and stress free. Carers should be treated with patience and kindness, with consideration for how they may feel. The system should offer flexibility in the range of ways carers can engage with the system, to fit around their other priorities.

Take-up of Carer's Allowance is difficult to measure as the criteria mean it is challenging to work out the number of people who are eligible but do not apply. We will consider how we can remove key barriers to take-up, as identified by our Benefit Take-up Strategy^[47]. For example, we are aware that in some communities people may be less likely to identify as carers, and for some groups of people there may be communication barriers – so we will address this in our communications and engagement plans.