Death on arrears
There might be a situation where a client entitled to a Carer’s Allowance Supplement payment has died before their payment has been made. Social Security Scotland will look into these cases to find out who should get the outstanding Carer’s Allowance Supplement payment.
If a case needs to be looked into by the Exceptions Team, they will send at least one letter to someone who knew the deceased carer.
This means a payee or a prospective payee might make a call to Social Security Scotland to give their bank details or to talk about the payment.
Exceptions Team
If you have gone through the death verification process and can identify the person to be paid – known as the death on arrears payee, send them the relevant letter. This explains that the payment may be due to them and they should contact us to talk about it.
If you have gone through the death verification process and can't identify the death on arrears payee, send the relevant letter. This explains we need more information to identify the right payee and they should contact us to talk about it.
Client Advisers
If you are called by the letter recipient, carry out the identity and verification checks. Clients will need to give you their unique letter reference number. If the letter reference does not match, transfer the payee to a member of the Exceptions Team.
If you cannot transfer the payee to a member of the Exceptions Team, make sure you tell the payee that a member of the Exceptions Team will call them back.
If the letter reference matches, you must find out if the caller is a payee or prospective payee.
For a payee:
- find out if they want to give details over the phone or if they need a bank mandate
- attempt a warm handoff to a finance colleague, if they want to give details over the phone
- tell the finance colleague during the warm handoff the deceased carer record the call relates to
If you cannot transfer the payee to a member of the Finance Team, make sure you tell the payee that a member of the Finance Team will call them back
For a prospective payee, tell them that a member of the Exceptions Team will call them back.
Finance Team
When receiving a warm handover
Make sure you do the following:
1. take ownership of the call from the client adviser
2. take the payee’s bank details and complete the spreadsheet
When you get a task to return a call to a payee
Make sure you do the following:
- call the payee using the details provided in the task handover
- carry out the identity and verification checks
If you have any doubts about the payee’s identity, tell them that we cannot take payment details over the phone and we will send them the relevant form via post.