Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics: update to 31 March 2025
The annual update of Scottish Welfare Fund Statistics for 2024-25. This includes annual statistics on Community Care Grants and Crisis grants from 2013, as well as quarterly breakdowns from 2020.
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Scottish Welfare Fund awards tend to go to applicants living in more deprived areas of Scotland. Around one in five people in Scotland live in the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland, as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). In 2024-25 around half of Community Care Grants (50%) and Crisis Grants (48%) were awarded to applicants living in these areas. In comparison, around 2% of Community Care Grants and 3% of Crisis Grants were awarded to applicants from the 20% least deprived areas (Table 61 and Table 63).
The amounts received by Community Care Grant applicants correlated slightly with deprivation levels during 2024-25, with those in quintile 1 receiving the largest awards, and those in quintile 3 the least. For Crisis Grants, average awards were broadly similar across all datazones (Chart 12). These figures generally vary year to year showing different patterns; this may imply that the individual needs of applicants are more important than where they live.
Chart 12: Distribution of awards and average award value by SIMD Quintile rankings of applicant’s postcode – January to March 2025
This is a montage of four charts showing how monies have been disbursed between different areas during the latest quarter based on their level of multiple deprivation.