Social assistance

Social assistance is based on need and thus requires declarations of income, family size, and other circumstances. It is provided on the basis of a means test that takes into account not only income but also capital; persons with a specific level of saving may be ineligible. Alternatively it may be only income-tested, the income from capital being assessed in the same way as other income. Often those who have been given the task of operating the scheme (social workers) have been allowed considerable discretion in deciding whether to give assistance and how much to give in certain types of cases.

In other countries social assistance plays a considerable role in supplementing social insurance benefits for those without other sources of income such as sick pay or employers pension schemes as well as providing for those without rights to benefits or those whose benefits have run out because they are paid only for a specific number of months (unemployment benefits).

Partly because of this problem of stigma, social assistance programs are called by a variety of different names in the hope that they will be more acceptable to applicants. For example, the term used is supplementary benefit in the United Kingdom and GAIN (guaranteed income) in British Columbia.

Rules of social assistance differ considerably from country to country and are usually determined locally rather than centrally.

In the United Kingdom, where rules are determined centrally persons in full-time work are not eligible. In the United States only households headed by a single parent are eligible.

The United States used what is essentially the social assistance approach for meeting the medical care needs of low – income persons under the Medicaid program.