Please find attached a campaign pack to support the current Funeral Support Payment campaign in Fife.
Funeral Support Payment usually will not cover the full cost of the funeral, but it should help pay for some costs.
It can be paid either the person or the funeral director who's helping plan the funeral.
To qualify for a Funeral Support Payment, a claimant must be in receipt of certain benefits (below) and the bereavement may also have triggered entitlement to one of them when previously they did not meet the criteria.
Benefits and tax credits the person or partner must get one or more of the following:
Any questions regarding the campaign activity, please reach out to the Benefit Take Up Campaign Lead, Audrey Whyte (awhyte@carfonline.org.uk)
Children of this age are likely to have started Primary 1 or have deferred starting school for another year.
A deadline of midnight on 28th February 2025 is approaching for parents or carers of children born between these dates to apply for any entitlement to the School Age Payment worth £314.45, especially if they have deferred a school start date.
This is part of Social Security Scotland's Best Start Grant but, to ensure that no other entitlements are also missed (such as Scottish Child Payment, free school meals or the school clothing grant) please encourage checking entitlement on the Fife Benefit Checker and within the results page they will find links to apply for all entitlements they are currently missing out on.
This scheme is for people who received a Recoverable Hardship Payment from Universal Credit.
The person will have had their Universal Credit reduced because of a sanction or fraud penalty.
The deadline for applications to ask for this repayment to be reviewed is 4th May 2025.
DWP can be asked to review its decisions not to stop the repayment of the hardship payment if all of the following apply:
You will also need to show that either:
More information and the link to apply is online:
Ask DWP to review their decision that you must repay a hardship payment - GOV.UK
Best Start Foods is a benefit in Scotland that provides a payment to help with the cost of being pregnant and looking after a child. It is paid by Social Security Scotland onto a prepaid card, which can be used to buy certain healthy foods
Below are links to reports on the use of the cards and barriers that Social Security Scotland have been made aware of through consultation with those entitled to the benefit. There appears to be increasing number of issues for those the payments are designed to support. Please help people to apply and use their cards if they are entitled to this support.
Client Survey - Five Family Payments December 2022 - March 2023
Five-Family-Payments-Client-Survey_Aug-Nov-22-1.pdf
This webinar will launch of the report Becoming Human Rights Defenders: Community organisations taking action on rural poverty in Scotland and will explore the learning from the project and share examples of practice change. The work was funded by the Scottish Government’s Equality and Human Rights Fund.
Contact: Sheena Watson
Email: sheena.watson@fife.gov.uk
