Take-up and the Social Fund

Abstract

Non-application to the social fund can lead to a reduction in the resources available to some of the most vulnerable members of society. This article shows how traditional models of take-up are inadequate for examining why payments from the discretionary cash-limited social fund do not always reach the people for whom the benefit was designed. Nevertheless, it is crucial to examine why non-application to the social fund denies many people even a chance of meeting their needs. A new model of take-up is proposed that widens the debate beyond the level of claimant behaviour, allowing non-application to the social fund to be looked at as a variant of non-take-up. It provides a framework for examining the influence of structural and administrative factors on social fund application rates and highlights the extent to which policy makers and legislators play a part in non-application.