Thousands of households in severe financial difficulty will have a lifeline thanks to changes to the Discretionary Assistance fund urged by the Bevan Foundation.
Insight
The DAF provides one-off payments to people in crisis and has seen demand soar during the cost of living crisis. We found that DAF has many more more demands on it than it was designed for, and that there was some confusion about the rules and reports of difficulties accessing the fund.
Ideas
We therefore identified several ways in which the scheme and its administration could be strengthened in 2023/24. We called for:
- The value of DAF payments should be increased in line with inflation.
- The frequency of payments should be standardised at 7 days apart (instead of 28 days)
- The number of payments someone is eligible for should be five in 12 months not three.
Outcomes
Many of our recommendations have been actioned by the Welsh Government with:
- the average value of DAF payments being increased by inflation i.e. 11%
- payments being allowed every 7 days rather than 28 days apart
- the budget for DAF being increased by £18.8 million.
