For a client or their partner to be eligible for Scottish Child Payment, they must receive one or more of the following benefits:
If a client under 16 applies for Scottish Child Payment, they may not have one of these benefits. Their application will be referred to the Decision Support Team.
A client can apply for Scottish Child Payment before the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) approves their application for a qualifying benefit. We must wait until they award the qualifying benefit before we can process their application.
The client must be awarded the qualifying benefit within 14 days of the Scottish Child Payment application being made.
If a client references a benefit from a European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland as their qualifying benefit, the Decision Support Team needs to be notified.
A client may make an application where they are receiving a qualifying benefit with their partner.
If the qualifying benefit is one of the following, these are seen as joint claims and the applicant will meet the qualifying benefit eligibility with no more checks required:
If the qualifying benefit is one of the following, then we must make further checks:
This is because these benefits are applied for by an individual but they may have a person named as their partner.
This means we need to check that the Scottish Child Payment applicant is the eligible person for the benefit payment.
A manual check on the system to get all the necessary details must be completed. This is because the award amounts will not populate when verifying with DWP/HMRC.
Some clients may have applied for Scottish Child Payment while waiting for a decision about a qualifying benefit application. We must check this if the client is not already receiving a qualifying benefit.
If the client notifies us that they have a zero award due to a sanction or deductions for liabilities, they do not have to provide evidence as the DWP will verify this information.
The client will tell us on their application which qualifying benefit they’re getting, or if they do not know.