There are many benefits that you, your partner or your family could get but it's often difficult to know what these are. The Financial Inclusion and Assessment Team is here to explain the different benefits and help you get what's rightfully yours.

You could be missing out on:

• Attendance Allowance
• Bereavement Allowance
• Bereavement Payments
• Carer's Allowance
• Child Benefit
• Community Care Grants
• Council Tax and Housing Benefit
• Disability Living Allowance
• Funeral Payment
• Incapacity Benefit
• Income Support 
• Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit
• Maternity Allowance
• Pension Credit
• Social Fund Crisis Loans
• State Retirement Pension
• Winter Fuel Payment

The team can give you more information on any of these benefits and even help you fill in the forms.

Case Studies

The Case Studies below give examples of how the FIAT have already helped others. We can make a real difference!

A 20 year old lone parent from our area was referred by our Benefit Assessor to carry out a Benefit Health Check.
By speaking to our advisors, Disability Living Allowance was claimed and there was an increase to Income Support, this amounted to an additional weekly amount of £157.80 with backdated payments of £1,894.

Mrs N recently moved to Dumfries and Galloway to be near her family. She self referred to the team for a benefit check.
It was discovered that she was entitled to additional Pension Credit back to 2005. The result was that Mrs N's Pension Credit was increased from £33.35 to £83.70 weekly with a backdate award of £8,370.60.

Mr B approached one of our Officers at a surgery held in Dumfries asking for advice on Disability Living Allowance.
Our Visiting Officer identified that customer should have been in receipt of DLA from March 1999. DLA Mobility allowance has now been awarded at a higher rate on a weekly basis. As a result £21,123.65 of backdated Disability Living Allowance has been awarded.