Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: Annual Update: 2021-22

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 financial year of 2021/22. It also contains information from previous financial years dating back to 1 April 2013, when the scheme began.

The publication includes monthly management information (informal returns) from January 2020 to May 2022, broken down by local authority, for comparison with the Official Statistics and to provide more recent figures that show the impacts of COVID-19 on the Scottish Welfare Fund. Monthly Self-Isolation Support Grant management information broken down by local authority is also included.

A supplementary spreadsheet containing 74 tables and 18 charts has also been published. Electronic versions of this document and accompanying tables and charts are available at the Scottish Government SWF web page.

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^[1].