The number of children actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment at a specific point in time (caseload).
| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Age | |
| Measure Type | |
| Reference Period | |
| Scottish Child Payment Indicator | |
|
Reference Area
(showing types of area available in these data) |
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Entire dataset
Note: These may be large files. |
CSVN-Triples |
Scottish Child Payment has been introduced for low-income families with children and young people aged under 16. It is intended to provide regular, additional financial support for families already in receipt of qualifying benefits to assist with the costs of caring for a child.
This dataset includes the number of children actively benefitting (caseload) from Scottish Child Payment. Statistics are provided for the last day of the calendar quarter, e.g. figures for 2023-09 are for the number of children actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment as of 30 September 2023.
In order to accurately reflect the active caseload for Scottish Child Payment, it is important to take into account the flows in both directions, i.e. include any new clients (parents or carers) and children who are receiving the benefit, and exclude those who are no longer eligible.
The methodology uses a caseload data extract containing live information on client’s and children’s eligibility, which makes it possible to identify all clients (and, in turn, children) who are in receipt of, or have been approved for a payment as of the latest reporting point in time, even if they have not been paid yet. This data extract can be used to produce breakdowns of the total caseload counts e.g. by age of child, or by local authority area.
The age of child that is used in this table is based on the age the child would be on a specific point in time, e.g. figures for 2023-09 shows the age the child would be on 30 September 2023.
As of May 2025, updated geography codes were used for this publication. Therefore, the number of children benefitting from Scottish Child Payment as of 31 March 2025 are broken down by intermediate zone 2022 codes. Prior to that publication, the analysis was done using intermediate zone 2011 codes.
Data on the number of received applications, authorised applications, and the number and value of issued payments for the Scottish Child Payment benefit are also available in a separate dataset.
Further information on the Scottish Child Payment statistics can be found in the associated publication.
Figures have been rounded to the nearest five for statistical disclosure control. Data has been suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five children.
Any cell in this dataset which is blank contains suppressed data. Therefore, caution should be exercised if summary data is calculated; it may include blank cells in which it will not be a true representation of geographical area totals.
The data used to produce these statistics are extracted from the Social Security case management system. Extracts from this system are also used on a daily basis for internal reporting within Social Security Scotland. As such, the data is checked routinely for consistency with previous extracts (i.e. do applications, decisions, payments and caseload figures increase as expected over time, and are they in proportion to each other) and compared to other sources of information such as the number of payment instructions reported by the finance team.
Quality assurance and cleaning has been carried out on the variables used in the official statistics:
Once the data is aggregated and copied into the publication and supporting Excel tables, the final statistics are quality assured by a different member of the statistics team.
The geographical area (e.g. intermediate zone 2022 etc.) is based on clients’ postcode information, rather than their children. Some clients' postcode information cannot be matched to a Scottish geographical area because their postcode is not on the lookup file used to match postcode to geographical area. These may be applications or change-of-circumstances forms from people living in properties that are too new to be on the lookup file. Furthermore, clients have been assigned as being non-Scottish if their postcode cannot be matched to a Scottish geographical area using a postcode lookup file, and where the application or change-of-circumstances form is also from a non-Scottish postcode area. Consequently, those children with unknown geographical area are excluded from this dataset. The impact of this exclusion is minimal as those children account for less than 0.2% of all children actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment.
The methodology for figures on the number of children actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment is broadly outlined below:
1) The client is actively in receipt of Scottish Child Payment as of the latest reporting period if their case remains active, and has any payment issued in the last 28 days to the latest caseload period. Additionally, if there is no payment issued because the case has only recently been approved, then the client would be deemed to be actively in receipt of Scottish Child Payment as long as the activation date is within the 7-day period to the latest reporting point in time.
2) The child is deemed to be actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment if their parent or carer (client) is in receipt of Scottish Child Payment and their eligibility remains valid for Scottish Child Payment (including the age criteria).
There are however a few limitations with this methodology:
1) The caseload data extract is a snapshot of live information on both client’s and children’s eligibility. Consequently, as new payment cases for clients have been established once their applications are approved, or Change of Circumstance forms were submitted from existing clients, this can retrospectively add more children or update the existing information we hold on them. Thus, applying this methodology to caseload data extracts obtained at different points in time would yield different caseload counts for the same point in time.
2) In related to the limitation mentioned above, although a client may be identified as ‘active’, this does not necessarily mean all children this client is responsible for are actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment at the latest reported point in time. It is possible that some of the children are no longer eligible if, for example, they have turned 16. Similarly, it is possible for some children to be approved for the benefit shortly after the reported point in time – and while the client would receive payments in arrears for these children, these children won’t have actively benefitted as of the latest reported point in time.
As a result, for each Scottish Child Payment publication this methodology will be applied to calculate a caseload count for the latest reported point in time only i.e. no retrospective revisions to previous counts will be made unless a methodological error is discovered. For example, in the publication ‘Scottish Child Payment: high level statistics to 30 September 2023’, the snapshot taken on 1 November 2023 was used to report the caseload count as of 30 September 2023, but was not used to update the caseload count for previous reporting periods (30 June 2023 etc.)
The Scottish Child Payment is the first benefit of its kind in the UK, therefore there are no comparable statistics.
Further information on application, processing times, re-determinations and appeals can be found in the associated publication.
Scottish Child Payment was introduced through secondary legislation, using the powers to top up a reserved benefit contained in section 79 of the Social Security Scotland Act 2018.
Social Security Scotland – the executive agency of Scottish Government responsible for delivering social security benefits for Scotland – began taking applications for Scottish Child Payment on 9 November 2020, following an announcement by the then Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People that the benefit would be open for applications in advance of its official launch on 15 February 2021 to help manage the expected demand.
Further details about the benefit can be found on the Scottish Government website.
These statistics are updated every three months. These updates coincide with our quarterly publications on Scottish Child Payment. These can be found at the Social Security Scotland website
Data are collected, validated and published in as timely a manner as possible in accordance with the Statistics Code of Practice.
In general, the caseload figures for each Scottish Child Payment publication should be final, and no retrospective revisions to previous figures will be made unless a methodological error is discovered.
Revisions and corrections to previously published statistics are dealt with in accordance with the Scottish Government Statistician Group corporate policy statement on revisions and corrections.
This is a linked data resource: it has a permanent unique uri at which both humans and machines can find it on the Internet, and which can be used an identifier in queries on our SPARQL endpoint.
A linked data-orientated view of dimensions and values
| Dimension | Locked Value |
|---|---|
|
Age
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/age
|
(not locked to a value) |
|
Reference Area
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refArea
|
(not locked to a value) |
|
Reference Period
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refPeriod
|
(not locked to a value) |
|
Scottish Child Payment Indicator
http://statistics.gov.scot/def/dimension/scottishChildPaymentIndicator
|
(not locked to a value) |
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Measure Type
http://purl.org/linked-data/cube#measureType
|
(not locked to a value) |
Linked Data is stored in graphs. We keep dataset contents (the data) separately from the metadata, to make it easier for you to find exactly what you need.
The data in this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/scottish-child-payment-caseload
The data structure definition for this data cube dataset is stored in the same graph as the data: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/scottish-child-payment-caseload
All other metadata about this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/scottish-child-payment-caseload/metadata
A breakdown by type of the 39,880 resources in this dataset's data graph.
| Resource type | Number of resources |
|---|---|
| Collection | 2 |
| Component specification | 7 |
| Data set | 1 |
| Data structure definition | 1 |
| Observation | 39,869 |
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