Carers investment totals £33.9m

Carer’s Allowance Supplement payments have been made to 83,000 carers who were eligible for payments in 2018. Eligible carers have received up to £442 across two payments, giving a total expenditure of £33.9m.

The Carer’s Allowance Supplement is a supplementary payment made to carers twice a year, bringing the total level of support they receive in payments in line with Jobseekers Allowance.

Social Security Secretary, Shirley Anne Somerville said:

“The Scottish Government recognises the important contribution carers make, and created the Carer’s Allowance Supplement to get more money into the pockets of carers in Scotland as quickly as possible.

“We have made commitment to increase CAS annually in line with inflation so the payments made this year in June and October will be £226.20.

Social Security Scotland Chief Executive, David Wallace, said:

“Our priority is to make sure that people get the right amount of money paid to them, into the right place and at the right time. We were happy to have done this successfully for these rounds of payments.

“We are working hard to make sure our client correspondence is clear and that people who interact with us are being treated with dignity, fairness and respect. This approach is clearly working and is something we will build upon as we introduce future benefits.”

Background:

This publication provides information on recipients of Carer’s Allowance in Scotland at November 2019 and recipients of the Carer's Allowance Supplement (CAS) to the October eligibility date 2018. This supplement is given to people in Scotland who receive Carer's Allowance on the CAS eligibility dates. These are two dates each year - one in April and one in October - which are set by the Scottish Government.

All tables and charts relating to this publication can be found at:
www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/SocialSecurityforScotland

These statistics are being published as experimental statistics, which are defined in the Code of Practice for Statistics as "new official statistics undergoing evaluation. They are published in order to involve users and stakeholders in their development and as a means to build in quality at an early stage." These statistics have not yet been assessed by the UK Statistics Authority, so have not been designated as National Statistics.