The Take-up Study

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    The Take-up Study: Understanding and improving benefit take-up towards the end of life

  • IRAS ID

    328940

  • Contact name

    Richard Harding

  • Contact email

    pa-richardharding@kcl.ac.uk

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 5 months, 30 days

  • Research summary

    Around 90,000 people die in poverty each year in the UK. Better access to benefits for people living with a terminal illness can help to lift people out of poverty and improve dignity.

    We don’t know how many people living with a terminal illness miss out on the benefits available to them, but in the wider community, benefits often go unclaimed.

    To improve benefit take-up for people living with terminal illness, we need i) better data on how many terminally ill people take up the benefits available to them, and groups most at risk of under-claiming; and ii) a better understanding of the experience of making a claim, and interventions that could improve take-up, especially for groups most at risk of under-claiming.

    Workstream 1 will use secondary analysis of existing routinely collected data to investigate the take-up of benefits among people living with a terminal illness using data from the Department for Work and Pensions linked to Census and Mortality records.

    Workstream 2 will use qualitative interviews with patients and family members living with terminal illness, and focus groups with health care professionals to understand the barriers and facilitators to claiming benefits.

    Workstream 3 will review existing benefit take-up initiatives from across the voluntary, community and local authority sector to understand what is already being done to support people living with a terminal illness to claim benefits.

    Workstream 4 will use the findings from workstreams 1, 2 and 3 to develop guidance and resources for healthcare professionals to support patients to make benefit claims, and to make local and national policy recommendations for monitoring and increasing benefit take-up for people living with terminal illness.

    As workstream 1 and 3 are exempt from needing ethical approval in line with REC and CREC guidance, this IRAS application relates primarily to workstream 2 only.

  • REC name

    London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    24/LO/0211

  • Date of REC Opinion

    25 Mar 2024

  • REC opinion

    Favourable Opinion