Scottish Welfare Fund - statutory guidance update: equality impact assessment - April 2025

2. Stage 1: Framing

2.1 Results of framing exercise

24. The SWF annual statistics are released each year. An equalities summary was published alongside this in 2024 which includes a breakdown of applications and awards per protected characteristic, including age, gender, ethnicity, religion and disability.

25. Recent data from the equalities summary published alongside the SWF 2023-24 annual statistics tells us that most applicants to the fund are between 30 and 39 years old. This has been consistent since SWF launched in 2013. The proportion of applicants aged 18-24 has declined since 2013. The distribution of applicants by age declines steeply until the mid-sixties, then flattens^[5].

26. Since the SWF began in 2013, there has been a slight increase in people who report a disability. The number of applicants reporting a ‘physical or mental health condition or illness lasting or expected to last 12 months’ or more varied by local authority, sitting at fewer than 10% of applicants in two local authorities to 75% in another ^[6].

27. Forty-nine percent of applicants to the SWF were male. This proportion varied by grant type with 42% of Community Care Grant applicants and 51% of Crisis Grant applicants being male. There is currently very little data available on people who identify as non-binary, although this was only an option to select for applicants towards the end of 2023/24^[7].

28. White ethnicities made up 90% of applicants to the SWF in the first quarter of 2024 which is similar to the average for the lifetime of the fund since it began in 2013. Increases have been seen in the amount of applications from mixed and black ethnic groups, although these still make up a small amount of overall applications. Applicants of mixed heritage had the largest amount of younger applicants with 77% under 45. This group of people also have the largest proportion of under-25^[8].

29. Of the 307,000 people who have declared a religion, 90% are Christian, 3% Muslim, 1% Pagan, 1% Buddhist and 4% other religions. There is a slight difference in award rate for applicants who refuse to offer information on their religion (67%) versus applicants who either have a religion or have declared no religion (both 63%)^[9].

2.2 Extent/Level of EQIA required

Does your policy/strategy/plan/project impact people?

Yes