Jane Hutt MS, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Social Justice, Trefnydd and Chief Whip
The Basic Income for Care Leavers in Wales pilot, launched on 1 July 2022, continues to attract significant interest in its progress, within Wales and the UK as well as from around the world. I know that my colleagues in the Senedd remain equally interested to learn how the pilot has progressed in its first two years of implementation.
Alongside this written statement, an update to the provisional monitoring data has been published today, covering the first two years of the pilot. The data reflects the information held as of 31 July 2024, taken from management data gathered through the enrolment period and any relevant subsequent updates.
We are now over 24 months on from the start of the pilot. The first eligible recipients turned 18 in July 2022 and began receiving payments from 1 August 2022. Many of the young people on the pilot are now entering the final months of their basic income payment with some young people already receiving their final payment and coming off the pilot from July 2024.
Formal enrolment to the pilot concluded on 30 June 2023 and based on the estimated eligible cohort numbers for the enrolment year, there was a 97% uptake rate, with 644 recipients of basic income in this pilot. We believe that, in percentage terms, this is the highest uptake of any opt-in basic income scheme worldwide.
Over the last 12 months, we have worked closely with our delivery partners to develop an approach to supporting young people as they near the end of their basic income payments. We recognise that there are over 600 unique stories and circumstances amongst the pilot cohort, therefore the approach introduces a minimum standard of support that is applicable for all recipients, with further support provided according to the young person’s individual circumstances. By working together with our partners and sharing learning as young people come off the pilot, including insights from the recipients themselves, we will continually review how transitions are working in practice. Further details about the transition from the pilot are available online.
Evaluation work continues to progress. In February 2024, we published the first in a series of thematic evaluation reports, which provided a description of the recipients, outlined an initial programme theory and summarised initial attitudes from practitioners. The next report, due to be published early next year, will look at implementation and initial impact. It is important that we await the result from the evaluation of this fixed term pilot and I look forward to seeing the next report early next year. Work is underway to consider the longer-term evaluation of the pilot using administrative data to enable us to understand the impact of the pilot on the lives of those taking part beyond 2027.