Key points:

• between 15 February 2021 and 31 March 2023, the value of Scottish Child Payments issued was £248.6 million, with almost £190.0 million paid out in the 2022/23 financial year (table 6)
• at local authority area level, the highest total value of payments made to clients in the 2022/23 financial year to date was in Glasgow City at £30.5 million, followed by Fife at £14.7m and North Lanarkshire at £14.4m (table 9)
• by the end of March 2023, Social Security Scotland had issued over 2.5 million payments to 183,565 individual clients (table 6, table 8).
• in the 2022/23 financial year, 177,145 individual clients received at least one Scottish Child Payment (table 7)
• as it is a recurring payment, over time there will be flows in both directions regarding the number of clients and children in receipt of Scottish Child Payment i.e. children who are no longer eligible dropping off, and new children being added to the active caseload
• as of 31 March 2023, it is estimated that 303,000 children aged 0-15 years were in receipt of Scottish Child Payment (table 8)
• the latest caseload estimate includes children who have been paid by to 31 March 2023, but does not include any children whose applications are yet to be processed
• to account for the significant number of clients who were being paid for the first time in the 28 day period used to estimate the number of children in receipt as at 31 March, there was a change to the methodology applied compared to previous releases

More information on this decision and how the figure was calculated can be found in the Methodology and definitions section of the background notes.