Five Family Payments: evaluation

Footnotes

1 Scottish Government (2022) Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan.

2 Auto-awards for these payments were introduced in November 2022 for people already receiving Scottish Child Payment.

3 Fraser of Allander (2024) The impact of the Scottish Child Payment on the need for food banks.

4 Scottish Government (2017) Responsibility-for-benefits-overview.

5 Scottish Government (2022) Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan.

6 Scottish Government (2022) Scottish Child Payment: interim evaluation.

7 Social Security Scotland (2025) Social Security Scotland: Statistics collections page; Scottish Government (2024) Scottish Child Payment; (Scottish Government, 2024) Scottish Child Payment: How it Works.

8 There are certain cases where people can receive the higher rate of Pregnancy and Baby Payment for a child that is not their first – e.g. cases where the person has had to leave their home with their other children because of domestic abuse. All of these cases are listed on the ‘Best Start Grant: How it Works’ page (see footnote 9).

9 Scottish Government (2020) Best Start Grant: interim evaluation.

10 Social Security Scotland (2025) Social Security Scotland: Statistics collections page; Scottish Government (2024) Best Start Grant; Scottish Government (2024) Best Start Grant: How it Works.

11 Previously, there were income limits for Best Start Foods for those receiving certain benefits like Tax Credits and Universal Credit. However, these were removed in February 2024, widening access to the program.

12 Scottish Government (2022) Best Start Foods: evaluation.

13 Social Security Scotland (2025) Social Security Scotland: Statistics collections page;; Scottish Government (2024) Best Start Foods; Scottish Government (2024) Best Start Foods: How it Works.

14 The online application process is compatible with assistive technologies, and clients can request three phone calls and letters in a variety of formats e.g. in over 100 different languages, using British Sign Language (BSL) video calls, or in braille, easy read and large print.

15 Scottish Government (2019) Devolved benefits: evaluating the policy impact

16 Scottish Government (2019) Devolved benefits: evaluating the policy impact

17 A detailed breakdown of the survey respondents’ demographic characteristics (e.g. including age, gender and employment status) is provided in the commissioned research report at Annex A.

18 Significance testing was performed using logistic regression to a significance level of 95%. This means that if the survey were to be run 100 times with a similarly drawn sample, the result reported would be found in 95 surveys out of the 100.

19 SIMD is a relative measure of deprivation across geographical areas in Scotland, based on income, employment, education health, access to services, crime and housing.

20 Note that the Client Survey does not collect information about some of the priority families at risk of poverty directly. In these cases, for the analysis, respondents were assigned to priority families based on proxy information (i.e. a combination of relevant demographic and household data which indicated respondents were in a priority family).

21 Scottish Government (2019) Devolved benefits: evaluating the policy impact

22 As explained in the Social security: benefit take-up strategy, lack of information (e.g. lack of awareness) is one of the key reasons why eligible people do not apply for benefits.

23Note that due to wide eligibility windows for some benefits and the need to ensure only people who have had their full eligibility window to apply are counted, there are some take-up rate estimates which are for years prior to 2023/24. Updated estimates of take-up rates will be published in Autumn 2025.

24 As explained in the Methodology chapter, results denoted by ‘#’ in Table 3 have been suppressed due to disclosure control.

25 It should be noted that Official Statistics do not include information about why applications are denied (i.e. which of the eligibility criteria denied applicants have not met).

26 Due to wide eligibility windows for some benefits and the need to ensure only people who have had their full eligibility window to apply are counted, there are some take-up rate estimates which are for years prior to the most recent financial year. These are the latest estimates.

27 Automated payments are also in place for Best Start Grant Early Learning Payment but the full effect has yet to be reported on since the latest estimated take-up rate was for children who first became eligible in 2021-22 (not necessarily paid in 2021-22).

28 UK Government (2024) Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up.

29 These figures are based on the number of applicants who completed an equalities monitoring form after data linking and de-duplication across benefits. This means that the figures in Tables 5-12 only count individual applicants once, even in cases where they had more than one application approved.

30 The percentages in Tables 5-12 were calculated by dividing the number of applicants with an approved application within the category by the total number of applicants with an approved application. For example, the percentage of applicants applying for Scottish Child Payment who had their application approved who were women, as shown in Table 5 (80%), is calculated by dividing the number of approved applicants who were women (17,725) by the total number of applicants with an approved application (22,180).

31 Scottish Government (2020) Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification 2020.

32 Scottish Government (2020) Scottish Index Multiple Deprivation 2020.

33 The Client Survey 2024-2025 report will be available on the Social Security Scotland publications page.

34 However, as noted previously, since November 2022 Scottish Child Payment clients have been automatically paid the Best Start Grant Early Learning Payment and School Age Payment if they had not already received them. This means it is not always necessary for clients to apply for these payments.

35 Tables 13 and 14 do not include cases where a re-determination was requested - i.e. approximately 1.5% of Scottish Child Payment applications, and 1.0% of Best Start Grant/Best Start Foods applications.

36 Please note that the period of 10 working days is used in Tables 13 and 14 to illustrate how processing times have changed each financial year since the benefits were launched. While Social Security Scotland aim to process applications as quickly as possible, there is no set target for providing Five Family Payments applicants with a decision on their claim.

37 Social Security Scotland (2025) Client experiences of automatic payments 2024.

38 It should be noted that these results do not tell us whether staff considered likely eligibility or other factors when choosing whether to provide further advice.

39 Social Security Scotland (2025) Our Charter.

40 Fahmy and Williamson (2018) Poverty and domestic violence; Howard (2018) Universal Credit and financial abuse.

41 Lister, Goode and Callender (2008) Income distribution within families and the reform of social security.

42 Fraser of Allander (2024) The impact of the Scottish Child Payment on the need for food banks.

43 These measures are used in the Family Resources Survey, which underpins UK and Scottish Government poverty statistics. Source: UK Government (2024) Review of the UK material deprivation measures.

44 Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2023) Inadequate Universal Credit and barriers to work.

45 Scottish Government (2024) Scottish Child Payment and the labour market.

46 Earlier in the report it was shown the majority of respondents ‘mostly’ spent Scottish Child Payment on child-related items. However, it was also shown that (a) a substantial minority ‘mostly’ used the payments for other essential costs, and (b) people spent the money in a range of ways - i.e. not exclusively on their child. This explains how Scottish Child Payment could also have been used for work and education costs in some cases. It is also possible Scottish Child Payment helped indirectly with work costs by ‘freeing up’ income received from other sources.

47 Scottish Government (2023) Supporting documents - Social Security business case: February 2023 - executive summary - gov.scot

48 Hoynes et al. (2016) Long-run impacts of childhood access to the safety net.

49 Milligan and Stabile (2011) Do child tax benefits affect the well-being of children? Evidence from Canadian child benefit expansions.

50 Bailey et al. (2024) Is the social safety net a long-term investment? Large-scale evidence from the food stamps program.

51 The Green Book: appraisal and evaluation in central government - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

52 Scottish Government (2022) Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026.

53 Note that for comparison Table 21 includes single year estimates for 2017/18 and three year averaged estimates for 2015-18. These time periods were immediately prior to the introduction of the first Five Family Payments benefit (i.e. the Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment in December 2018).

54 Office for National Statistics (2025) Inflation and price indices.

55 Resolution Foundation (2022) Cost-of-living gap between rich and poor hits fresh high, as effective inflation rate for low-income households hits 12.5 per cent.

56 Scottish Government (2025) Child poverty in Scotland falls.

57 Scottish Government (2025) Child poverty modelling: update.

58 Scottish Government (2024) Scottish social security system: seldom-heard groups: research.

59 However, as previously mentioned, these long-term aims will be affected by other Scottish Government policies and external factors, and therefore will not only be attributable to the Five Family Payments.

60 As noted in the methodology chapter, the lag between fieldwork dates and the subsequent publication of datasets means that, at the time of writing, there is not enough population survey data available to assess the impact of the Five Family Payments in a meaningful way.

61 Significance testing was performed using a Rao & Scott adjusted Pearson’s Chi-square test to assess the association between categorical variables, accounting for the complex survey design. Results are reported to a significance level of 95%. This means if the survey was run 100 times with a similarly drawn sample, the result reported would be found in 95 surveys out of the 100.

62 Note that this question is asked in Understanding Society, a UK household longitudinal survey.