The Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance (BSCFA) scheme provides a one-off payment to eligible families to assist with the extra costs when their children start school each autumn. The allowance is not intended to meet the full cost of school clothing and footwear but only to provide assistance towards these costs. Expenditure on the scheme in 2010 was €77.4m with some 162,500 payments made in respect of approximately 325,000 children.
The number of children aged 2 to 4 years of age (inclusive) that benefited in 2010 was 63,200. The number of such children for the 2011 scheme will be available when all claims are processed. Statistics are not available regarding the number of these that were attending school or preschool.
The BSCFA scheme was introduced in 1990. This scheme superseded the arrangements which had been in place since 1977 whereby child clothing and footwear payments were made under the exceptional needs provisions of the Supplementary Welfare Allowance (SWA) scheme. The SWA clothing and footwear scheme had in turn replaced a previous Public Assistance Footwear scheme that had been introduced in 1944.
These previous schemes had been targeted at both school and pre-school children from the age of two years up. When the BSCFA scheme was introduced, the provision to pay the allowance to children from the age of two years up was retained.
At the end of this year's BSCFA scheme a review will be undertaken of all aspects of the operation of the scheme, including eligibility criteria.