Outlines the origins and progress of the supplementary assistance scheme, in the contexts of politics, administration, and public opinion. The paper argues that supplementary assistance has been allowed to develop into an additional benefit structure without much questioning of the original underlying assumptions made hurriedly in 1951. When a scheme is tailored to meet individual needs, the term “need” becomes the keystone of the whole structure. However, in this instance, the term has never been satisfactorily defined. Moreover, supplementary assistance seemed to be confused with the concept of an ‘emergency fund’ and it was a long time before this confusion was removed. The lack of preliminary surveys, the absence of a corpus of carefully thought-out principles, the vagueness and uncertainty as to policy directions and objectives, all indicated that supplementary assistance originated as an election child. Various projects had been developed within the framework of supplementary assistance: domestic aid and a scheme to help the occupants in rest homes came early in 1953, followed by participation in the “meals on wheels” service and the advances for major repairs scheme in 1957-8. The 1960s brought a widening of the scope of lump sum grants to include, for example, dentures, spectacles, hearing aids, transportation costs for medical treatment, and telephone installation costs. It was not until 1958 that expenditure for the scheme rose above the original allowance of £200,000. By 1969 the scheme accounted for over $2 million a year.