Scottish Child Payment: FOI release (2024)

Information requested

Please could you provide the following information pertaining to the Scottish Child Payment:

1. How is the fiscal amount of Child Payment calculated to ensure it achieves the objectives of the policy?
2. How many children are in receipt of the Child Payment in 2023?
3. The First Minister has stated that 90.000 children have been 'lifted out of poverty' by the payment. How is this figure calculated? What data is available to ascertain this figure is accurate, how frequently is that data gathered, and what mechanisms are in place to gather this data consistently?
4. How is a child 'lifted out of poverty' defined? Please provide the criteria deployed that defines 'in' and 'out' of poverty to achieve the figure of 90,000.
5. What data gathering exercises are performed to ensure children 'out of poverty' remain so while in receipt of the Child Payment?
6. How are the outcomes of being 'out of poverty' for the child monitored? i.e. educational, health, dietary or lifestyle improvements.
7. How are any potential fraudulent claims or those no longer entitled to the payment controlled?

Response

1. How is the fiscal amount of Child Payment calculated to ensure it achieves the objectives of the policy?

The initial rate of Scottish Child Payment of £10 per week per eligible child aged under 6 was set inFebruary 2021 and was driven by the objective of the policy to reduce relative child poverty afterhousing costs by 3 percentage points. During the development of Scottish Child Payment, a range ofdifferent income supplement options were analysed. The details of this analysis can be found inIncome supplement: analysis of options - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

To increase the impact of Scottish Child Payment on child poverty, the payment was increased to £20 inApril 2022 and to £25 in November 2022, when up-rating was also brought forward, and eligibility wasextended from eligible children aged under 6 to eligible children aged under 16. Latest ScottishGovernment modelling published on February 28th and available here:Child poverty cumulative impactassessment: update - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) projects Scotland’s relative child poverty rate will be 6percentage points lower than it would have been without Scottish Child Payment in 2024-25, meaning itwill keep 60,000 children out of relative poverty that year.

The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 places a statutory duty on the Scottish Government to up-rateScottish Child Payment each year, to ensure the amount paid to clients is adjusted for inflation. Previousincreases to Scottish Child Payment to £20 and £25 were in excess of inflation and in April 2024 it willbe increased by a further 6.7% to £26.70, in line with the September 2023 CPI. An assessment of thevarious metrics available to Scottish Ministers to up-rate devolved social security assistance can befound here: Up-rating devolved Social Security assistance: multi criteria decision analysis - January2024 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

2. How many children are in receipt of the Child Payment in 2023?

The information you have requested is available from Social Security Scotland in the followingpublication: Social Security Scotland - Scottish Child Payment: high level statistics to 31 December2023. As of 31 December 2023, 327,650 children were receiving Scottish Child Payment.

3. The First Minister has stated that 90.000 children have been 'lifted out of poverty' by the payment. How is this figure calculated? What data is available to ascertain this figure is accurate, how frequently is that data gathered, and what mechanisms are in place to gather this data consistently?

As above, latest Scottish Government modelling published on 28 February 2024 and available here:Child poverty cumulative impact assessment: update - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)projects in 2024-25,Scottish Child Payment will keep 60,000 children out of relative poverty in Scotland and ScottishGovernment policies overall will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty.

As set out in pages 3 and 10 ofTackling child poverty delivery plan: progress report 2022 to 2023 -gov.scot (www.gov.scot),published in June 2023, the previous estimate of 90,000 children lifted out ofpoverty relates to the fullScottish Government policy package in 2023-24, including 50,000 childrenestimated to be lifted out of poverty by Scottish Child Payment specifically. More details of these resultscan be found inTackling child poverty delivery plan - annual progress report: annex b - cumulativeimpact assessment update - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

This 90,000 estimate was calculated using latest published Family Resources Survey data which arenational statistics from a robust and widely used annual survey of income produced by the Departmentfor Work and Pensions, andUKMOD, an open-access tax and benefit micro-simulation model. Themethodology used to produce this estimate is the sameas previous estimates of the child povertyimpact of Scottish Government policies, as set out in the Methodology section of Second Tackling ChildPoverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026: Annex 4: Cumulative Impact Assessment (www.gov.scot)andspecifically for Scottish Child Payment, the Methodology section in Scottish Child Payment - estimatingthe effect on child poverty - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

4. How is a child 'lifted out of poverty' defined? Please provide the criteria deployed that defines 'in' and 'out' of poverty to achieve the figure of 90,000

As set out in the methodology sections referenced above, a child is considered to be lifted out ofpoverty by a policy or package or policies if the modelling suggests the household would not be belowthe poverty line with the policy in place, but would be below the poverty line if the policy was not inplace. Poverty is defined either as relative poverty (household income below 60% of current UK medianhousehold income) or absolute poverty (household income below 60% of the 2010/11 UK median,uprated by inflation). The figure of 90,000 relates to the estimated change in relative poverty. The latestchild poverty statistics for Scotland can be found here: Child poverty summary (data.gov.scot).

5. What data gathering exercises are performed to ensure children 'out of poverty' remain so while in receipt of the Child Payment?

As set out above, Scottish Government estimates of the poverty impact of Scottish Child Payment ismodelled using Family Resources Survey data and UKMOD, an open-access tax-benefit microsimulationmodel. Official statistics are also routinely published for Scottish Child Payment by SocialSecurity Scotland and are available at Social Security Scotland - Statistics but current data does notcapture the poverty status of individual Scottish Child Payment clients. This means it is not possible todetermine which individual children move in and out of poverty as a result of receiving Scottish ChildPayment but UKMOD can estimate Scottish Child Payment’s poverty impact on an aggregate basis.

6. How are the outcomes of being 'out of poverty' for the child monitored? i.e. educational, health, dietary or lifestyle improvements

Scottish Child Payment forms part of a wider policy package intending to support the national missionof tackling child poverty, as set out inBest Start, Bright Futures, the second Tackling Child PovertyDelivery Plan.ThePlan is supported by a comprehensive evaluation strategy, which includes regularmonitoring of progress around the three main drivers of poverty; income from employment, incomefrom social security and cost of living. It also includes a summary assessment of how individualpolicies, including the Scottish Child Payment, are contributing towards the child poverty mission. Thelatest progress report includes the most recent update: Tackling child poverty delivery plan - progressreport 2022-23: annex a - measurement framework - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The Scottish Government explores the impact of Scottish Child Payment through a comprehensivepolicy evaluation programme, set out in the published evaluation strategy: Devolved benefits: evaluatingthe policy impact - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). The first evaluation included a qualitative programme ofresearch with recipients to assess the short-term impact of the benefit. Specifically, it explored whetherpayments had led to increased child related spend, improved household finances, and improved healthand wellbeing. The evaluation report was published on 29 July 2022 and can be found here:Supportingdocuments - Scottish Child Payment: interim evaluation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The next evaluation, due to be published in Summer 2025, will assess the medium-term impact of thebenefit on families and children including whether it has led to improvement in outcomes for individuals.Outcomes are detailed in the Scottish Child Payment logic model, and include: children are able toparticipate in social and educational opportunities; reduced incidence of debt; improved health andwellbeing; and reduced incidence of material deprivation.

In addition to evaluation research, Social Security Scotland administer a Five Family Payments (FFP)Client Survey completed by recent applicants. It asks respondents, the vast majority of whom haveapplied for Scottish Child Payment, whether the payments have helped them to buy healthy food andmilk for their children, and helped their children to participate in social or educational opportunities. FourFFP Client Survey reports have been published since December 2022. The most recent report waspublished in November 2023 and is available here: Social Security Scotland - Client Survey: Five FamilyPayments (April 2023 - July 2023).

7. How are any potential fraudulent claims or those no longer entitled to the payment controlled?

Social Security Scotland has a Counter Fraud service in place, which investigates allegations of fraudwhere necessary and proportionate to do so. Social Security Scotland also receive notification from ourclients and other government departments when a client’s circ*mstances has changed, which mayimpact eligibility. The necessary checks are completed as a result of these notifications and actiontaken, if and when appropriate.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.