Welfare Rights Team - Annual Report 2023/2024

Last financial year we received 8,022 referrals this was a 7% increase on last financial year. 6,094 of these referrals were new to the service. We also received 579 general enquiries that were not recorded against a household. These enquiries were mainly from support workers looking for general information about topics that may affect a wide range of the people they are supporting.

This is the first year that people referring themselves is lower than services referring people to us and we believe that this is attributable to the amount of awareness raising we have been doing over the last couple of years with internal and external services.

How people contact the service

• Referrals made via online form: 42% (3125 referrals were received and 2053 of these were submitted by Perth & Kinross Council teams).
• Referrals made via telephone: 34%
• Referrals made via email: 20%
• Referrals made face-to-face (outreach and office visits): 2%

The remaining referrals were made via letter and social media.

Last financial year, August and November were our busiest months and we assume this is due to children returning to school after the holidays and the run up to Christmas.

3,727 households referred themselves last year and this gives us confidence that people know where to come for advice, assistance and representation. 55% made contact via telephone and 40% via online methods (form and email). The remaining initial contacts included methods such as face-to-face at outreach surgeries, office visits and social media.

Overall, online methods of initial contact far outweigh any other method and this is due to the fact that most people prefer to access our service using discreet channels of communication.

More referrals were made by agencies (collectively) than by self-referrals for the first year on record. The services/agencies that make the highest volume of referrals are the Scottish Welfare Fund, Social Work colleagues, Health and Housing this has been consistent over the past 5 years.

50% of referrals were classed as "No Further Action", this does not mean however that no advice was provided it could mean that no assistance was required beyond the initial advice because the household was able to undertake the necessary actions (usually benefit claims) without our assistance. It could mean that we made onward referral to a more suitable support service or it could mean that there was no further action required following our initial assessment.

The other half of the referrals we received required advice and/or assistance beyond the initial contact.

The most complex cases are allocated to individual workers for ongoing casework. Casework is allocated on a geographical basis unless the case should be allocated to a worker on a particular project (Welfare Rights Officers that work on projects tend to cover the whole of the Perth and Kinross area).

Geographical case allocations are as follows:

• Blairgowrie & Coupar Angus
• Highland
• Kinross
• Crieff and Auchterarder
• Perth

Anyone contacting the team is offered a comprehensive welfare benefits check to establish whether or not they are missing out on entitlements.