Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The aims of the study were to enable the Department of Social Security (DSS) to assess the extent to which the social fund is achieving its objectives, principally that help is being targeted on the areas of greatest need; to establish whether there are areas of need which ought to be met by the social fund; the effect of the budget on meeting those needs, whether changes are necessary in the directions and guidance and whether changes are required in the division of the budgets between loans and grants.
Main Topics:
The DSS interest was in the discretionary budget limited elements of the fund including crisis loans, budgeting loans and community care grants. The research was required to cover successful applicants for loans and grants, unsuccessful applicants for loans and grants, people receiving income support who had not applied for help to the fund and people on low incomes not receiving income support. The questions to be tackled by the research included: What was the nature and extent of the needs for lump sum payments? What degree of help was provided by the fund to help meet those needs? What help was provided by other quarters? What was their previous history of supplementary benefit single payments? How did loan applicants cope with repayments? What alternative strategies were adopted by unsuccessful applicants/non applicants; how did they cope? What is the general attitude of applicants/non applicants to the social fund; what led them to turn to (not to turn to) it for help? How were they treated by the local office; what did they think of the application procedure? How has the discretion been applied locally on individual cases and in relation to priority setting? What local differences does this give rise to in the approach to a case?
The selection of a sample of local offices to represent the whole population of offices in the UK was based on available statistics pertaining to characteristics of the census areas in which offices are located. Principal component analysis was used to construct four composite variables which would to some extent reflect levels of `need' in each area: unemployment and low economic status, urbanisation, demographic structure, and poor housing conditions. These variables were used as the basis for a cluster analysis which grouped local offices into eight relatively homogeneous sets one of which included only Northern Ireland offices. Forty-two offices were then randomly selected proportionately from the eight sets. Three offices in Northern Ireland were included for completeness but the household survey was carried out only in the 39 offices in Great Britain. For further details see Technical Annex B of the documentation.
Face-to-face interview
