Cost-of-living crisis drives increase in demand for additional needs payments

The additional needs payments from the Community Welfare Service can be used to cover costs such as fuel, utility bills, clothing and even prams and funeral expenses.

Requests for assistance through additional needs payments are up 18% and cost the State almost €17m in just the first five months of this year.

The cost-of-living crisis is understood to be the reason behind the jump in demand for direct assistance, administered by the Community Welfare Service, covering costs such as fuel, utility bills, clothing and even prams and funeral expenses.

With the government under increasing pressure to deliver measures to help cash-strapped families, figures from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP) show in the first five months of this year, some 27,800 payments were made, totalling €16.8m, up from 23,400 in the same period last year.

In recent weeks there has been increased advertising for the DEASP's Community Welfare Service, while the manager of a Barnardos centre said Community Welfare Officers were typically best placed to directly assist families under financial pressure and needed to be more visible and accessible.

Additional Needs Payment Scheme

According to a spokesperson for DEASP: "The Government has provided funding of €45.75 million for the additional needs payment in 2022. Expenditure is not capped as it is demand-led and no qualifying application will be refused. A further provision of €5.3 million has been provided for other Supplementary Welfare Allowance expenses (excluding rent supplement) in 2022.

"The main items eligible for assistance include help with fuel, utility bills, repairs to or replacement of household appliances, clothing, child-related items such as prams, assistance with funerals and travel."

"In the period January to end of May 2022, over 27,800 additional needs payments have been made totalling €16.8 million. In the period January 2021 to end of May 2021, over 23,400 equivalent payments were made."

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The additional needs payment is administered by the Community Welfare Service of the Department of Social Protection and provides help and support to people facing financial hardship. 

Under the scheme, the department may make an additional needs payment to people on a low income, whether they’re working or receiving a welfare payment, to meet essential expenditure, which a person could not reasonably be expected to meet out of their weekly income.

The department said it had recently launched a communications campaign to further promote the additional needs payment in order to increase awareness of the service – particularly among those who may not normally access social welfare supports, including those working on a low income.

The earlier-than-usual Budget scheduled for September is likely to include a raft of measures aimed at assisting families hit by rising costs, particularly with winter on the horizon.

More supports needed

Esther Pugh, manager of the Barnardos centre near Dublin, recently told the Irish Examiner that more targeted supports were needed and the best way to provide them was directly through Community Welfare Officers (CWOs), who she said seemed to have become less visible and less accessible, even before the pandemic.

"Those CWOs who would be very skilled working in communities where they had built up relationships with professionals and families and are skilled at assessing the level of need, [but] they do seem to have lost some of their autonomy.

"I would be a strong proponent of putting CWOs into locations where they are accessible and visible and streamlining the process."

The Additional Needs Payment Scheme - previously called the Exceptional Needs Payment Scheme - is open to anyone to apply, but there is a restriction on the level of household income and it is Means Tested.

In its budget submission published last week the St Vincent de Paul called for the improvement of the adequacy and accessibility of the scheme, to ensure adequate resources are invested into the frontline services and to reduce wait times for application and processing.

A spokesperson for the charity said it had seen a 20% increase in the number of calls made to it for help in the first six months of this year, after a "record year" in 2021 when it received 191,000 calls.

"In general, the society is seeing an increase in calls for help and one of the things the society will do is recommend for people to go for the Additional Needs Payment Scheme, if that is appropriate," the spokesperson said.

Anyone who needs support should contact the department either through their local Intreo or Branch Office or by phoning 0818 60 70 80.