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Children's Handbook Scotland | 2024/25

19. The Scottish Welfare Fund

• Crisis grants
• Community care grants

The Scottish Welfare Fund makes two types of payments:

•crisis grants; and
•community care grants.

Local authorities are responsible for administering the Scottish Welfare Fund on behalf of the Scottish government.

Scottish Welfare Fund grants can be cash, vouchers or goods.

Crisis grants

Crisis grants are intended to help with expenses in an emergency or a disaster if you have no other money to meet your immediate needs. For example, you may get a crisis grant if:

•you have lost money that you need to live on, your regular income has not been paid and you are in hardship; or
•there has been a disaster like a fire or flood that has caused damage.

Community care grants

A community care grant is intended to help you and your family stay independent in the community by helping you pay for items such as furniture, clothing or removal expenses. There is no ceiling on the amount you can apply for. To qualify, you must be on a low income. You are automatically treated as having a low income if you get:

•universal credit; or
•income support; or
•income-based jobseeker’s allowance; or
•income-related employment and support allowance; or
•pension credit.

Even if you are not on one of these benefits, your local authority can still decide that you are on a low income.

A community care grant can be paid:

•to help you, a member of your family or a person for whom you care establish yourself (or themself) in the community following a stay in institutional or residential accommodation;
•to help you, a member of your family or a person for whom you care remain in the community rather than enter institutional or residential accommodation;
•to help you set up home in the community as part of a planned resettlement programme, following a period during which you have been homeless or without a settled way of life;
•to ease exceptional pressures on you or your family;
•to allow you, or your partner, to care for a prisoner or young offender on temporary release.