Supporting local people 

The Scottish Welfare Fund offers two types of grants for people on low incomes. Crisis Grants are designed to help people manage an emergency like a flood, burglary or job loss. Community Care Grants are designed to support people to live at home by helping to provide essential furniture or white goods. Both grants can take the form of money, vouchers, travel tickets or items like cookers or beds.  

People apply for assistance through their local council, and we’ve administered this service for Clackmannanshire Council since 2019.  

Ben Watson is the council’s Revenues Supervisor: 

“The volume of applications to the Scottish Welfare Fund had risen significantly and we were struggling to process them in-house. We turned to NEC because we already used their software and knew they had experience administering welfare support.” 

Assessing eligibility 

Our work involves taking applications by phone and email and following both national and local guidance to determine eligibility. We make these decisions to the deadlines set out in the guidance, which is the end of the following working day for Crisis Grants and within 15 working days for Community Care Grants. The decisions made by NEC are then fulfilled through the council, who make BACS payments and arrange for goods to be delivered via their partner, The Furnishing Service.  

Flexible support 

Under the guidance, awarding councils still have a lot of discretion. This means the decisions we make are kept under constant review, including daily contact with the council and a bi-weekly catch up. Ben says this contact has been vital to the quality of the service:  

“NEC administers the service to a high standard and we’ve been impressed with the level of detail in the reporting too.” 

Since 2019, the council has been able to reduce the level of support required from NEC to more closely match demand.