Findings from the Temporary Additional Support Campaign (2018)
This report helps us understand whether proactive contact improves take-up of TAS, and if it does, what type of contact is most effective.
Temporary Additional Support (TAS) is a weekly hardship payment for individuals with high ongoing costs relative to their income. The payment is available for 13 weeks, but it is often renewed.
The payment provides an important element of the welfare safety net for people facing severe financial hardship.
In late 2018 there were just over 59,000 people receiving payments. Although there was some uncertainty about the exact magnitude, modelling at the time suggested that the take-up of this payment among those eligible could be as low as 68 percent.
Low rates of take-up mean that there is more financial hardship than necessary, with associated consequences related to families not being able to afford housing, food, medical costs and other essentials.
A project team tasked with rebuilding a new automated process in June 2018 came to the view that the Ministry’s microsimulation model (MSIM) should be repurposed to calculate if people might be eligible for TAS based on existing administrative data about their other payments and housing costs.
A key concern was that if the MSIM model was not accurate then this might falsely raise expectations about increased payments and generate applications that were subsequently declined. As a result, a trial was deemed necessary to ensure that the type of proactive contact used in the final business process was effective.
The November 2018 Temporary Additional Support campaign aimed to assess the new method of identifying people who were not currently receiving but potentially eligible for the payment.
The campaign also aimed to test the effectiveness of different forms of proactive contact. Those with the highest level of estimated financial need were contacted by either letter, email, or phone and told they might qualify for the payment. People who decided to apply were then required to follow the normal process for TAS applications involving an initial assessment of eligibility over the phone, filling out an application form and attending an appointment at a local office.
Key findings are that:
- proactive contact increased the number of people applying for and being granted the TAS payment by 10 percentage points
- email contact increased the rate of TAS receipt by 7 percentage points, letters by 11 percentage points, and outbound phone calls by 17 percentage points
- the campaign targeted individuals with the highest levels of financial need, and for those contacted who were subsequently granted TAS the payment was around $80 per week
- in the short-term the campaign did not result in people remaining on benefit for longer, although we do not know how the campaign affected time on benefit after 7 weeks
- among the population targeted by the campaign, between 23 percent and 72 percent of those identified by the modelling were likely eligible for the payment.
The campaign has been subsequently rolled out in a modified form as a continuing business process.
