Social Security Experience Panels: short-term assistance - report

Background and research methods

This report outlines the key themes from 10 focus groups that took place in August and September 2019 with Experience Panel members. The research considered:

• What Short-term assistance is and expectations around how Short-term assistance can be accessed
• Participant’s views on how to make people aware of Short-term assistance at the right time.
• Likelihood of people challenging Social Security Scotland decisions if Short-term assistance is available.

All Experience Panel members were invited to take part in these focus groups. There were 10 focus groups on Short-term assistance across 7 locations and 39 panel members took part^[1].

At the beginning of the focus groups, participants were given information on what Short-term assistance is. The full written information is shown in Annex A. It included information on what Short-term assistance is, the purpose behind it, how long someone receives it, who is entitled to it, if it had to be paid back, information on passported benefits, and if it’s available to people who have their Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits reduced or stopped.

The Social Security Experience Panels are made up of volunteers from the Scottish population who have experience of at least one of the benefits that are coming to Scotland. The results of this work should be regarded as being reflective of the experience and views of the participants only. They are not indicative of the views of the wider Scottish population.