Take-up rates of Scottish benefits: October 2022

Commentary

Scottish Child Payment, Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods

The estimated take-up rates for Scottish Child Payment, Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods – the 'Five Family Payments' – are generally higher than the other Scottish benefits.

This could be because there are more opportunities to reach people eligible for the five family payments than the other Scottish benefits. For example, the Scottish Government's interim evaluations of Scottish Child Payment, Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods found clients learned about them through a variety of channels. Social Security Scotland proactively promotes the benefits through a range of online and offline channels. For example, five family payment leaflets are available in the Scottish Government's baby box, were sent to parental support organisations, money advice services, healthcare practitioners and added to midwife information packs. Information is also sent to schools and nurseries via local authorities, encouraging them to share information on their channels. This helps to spread awareness through word of mouth, and is also complemented via online, print, radio and out of home media advertising as well as social media.

Clients are invited to make a combined application for all of the five family payments and their eligibility for each is then assessed. So clients may apply for one of the five family payments, which then leads them to apply for the others they were previously unaware of, increasing take-up.

There has been an increase in the estimated take-up rate for Best Start Foods from 2020-21 to 2021-22, up 14 percentage points to 88%. Some of this increase could be linked to the work Social Security Scotland has been carrying out with supermarkets in Scotland to raise awareness and encourage take-up of Best Start Foods, with a particular focus on explaining how to use the pre-paid card.

There was also a noticeable increase in the take-up rate for Best Start Grant: School Age Payment in 2020-21, to 91%. One possible explanation is more people seeking Government support during the Covid-19 pandemic, as seen with the rise in the number of applications for Universal Credit.

Young Carer Grant

More than seven in ten (73%) people estimated to be eligible for Young Carer Grant claimed the payment in 2021-22. This has risen slightly on the previous year. However, there is a greater degree of uncertainty when estimating the size of the eligible population for Young Carer Grant than other benefits, due to the small size of the eligible population and difficulties in collecting information about caring in survey data. Therefore, relatively small differences in take-up rates over time should be treated with caution.

Job Start Payment

We estimate that less than a third (29%) of eligible young people took-up their entitlement to Job Start Payment in 2021-22. This is the lowest take-up rate we have estimated of any Scottish benefit and is broadly similar to the estimated take-up rate for 2020-21. An evaluation of the payment was published on 23^rd September 2022 which highlights a number of possible reasons why take-up is low. These include a lack of awareness of the benefit and its eligibility rules, and otherwise eligible applications being rejected due to clients' inability to provide suitable evidence of job offers.

The evaluation findings summarise the following areas where changes could potentially improve take-up: a) raising awareness of Job Start Payment among young people and support organisations, b) making improvements to the application process including simplifying it, and c) considering adjustments to eligibility criteria. Work is already underway to address the issues highlighted in the evaluation, including making the application process easier and adjusting some of the eligibility criteria.

Funeral Support Payment

Funeral Support Payment was claimed for around two thirds (66%) of eligible deaths in 2021-22. The take-up rate has increased from an estimated 49% in the previous financial year (2020-21). Although the number of claims has remained fairly consistent between the two financial years, there were more eligible deaths in 2020-21 due to the economic impacts of the pandemic as more people become eligible for support. The increase in take-up between the two financial years could be partly influenced by increased promotional activity for the benefit. The Funeral Support Payment evaluation details a number of improvements that have been made to communications, such as advertising on radio to better reach the target population.

Comparison to the Second Benefit Take-Up Rate Strategy (published in October 2021)

Due to methodological improvements made this year comparisons should not be made between the take up figures in last year's publication and this one. However, Table 1 and Table 2 (page 3) can be used to understand changes in the take-up rate over time.

The methodology to estimate the take-up rate of the five family payments has been developed since the second Benefit Take-Up Strategy published in October 2021. Last year, the microsimulation model UKMOD was used to estimate eligibility in the absence of eligibility data. However, we have changed our approach because published data on young children in families claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credits is now available.

The effect of this change is to increase take-up rates. For example, while our take-up rate estimate for Scottish Child Payment as of June 2021 was 77%, our new approach to estimating eligibility would have produced a take-up rate estimate of 85%.

We believe this development provides more robust estimates of take-up.

Future Developments

This publication includes our initial estimates of take-up for Young Carer Grant and Job Start Payment. We are continuing our work to develop methodologies to estimate take-up rates for the other Scottish benefits not yet reported on (e.g. Adult Disability Payment), which have only recently launched or will be launched in the coming years. When new take-up rates can be produced, they will be subject to the roll-out stage and availability of data on recipients and the eligible population required to estimate take-up.