Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: Update to 31 December 2022

Introduction

The Scottish Welfare Fund comprises Community Care Grants, which help people to live independently, and Crisis Grants, which provide a safety net in a disaster or emergency.

This publication provides information on the Scottish Welfare Fund for the latest quarter, 1 October to 31 December 2022. It also contains information from previous financial years dating back to 1 April 2013 when the scheme started. However, this edition concentrates on the period from April 2018 onwards. The next update of this publication, to be released in July 2023, will include applications received in January 2023 to March 2023. Disclosure control has been applied to the figures reported here, with all values rounded to the nearest five observations.

The publication includes monthly management information (informal returns) from January 2020 to February 2023, broken down by local authority, for comparison with the Official Statistics and to provide more recent figures, including monthly Self-Isolation Support Grant management information broken down by local authority.

A supplementary spreadsheet containing 46 tables and 16 charts has been published. Electronic versions of this document and supplementary tables and charts are available here.

These statistics are being published as experimental statistics. Experimental statistics are defined in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics as "new official statistics undergoing evaluation. They are published in order to involve users and stakeholders in their development and as a means to build in quality at an early stage." These statistics have not yet been assessed by the UK Statistics Authority. They have not been designated as National Statistics. More information on experimental statistics is available from the Statistics Authority.