In early 1998 the government of Indonesia established several social safety net programmes to help the poor and the newly poor cope with the impact of the impending economic crisis, covering food security, employment creation, education, health, and community empowerment. This article evaluates the impact of these programmes on household welfare and poverty, utilising a panel data set of over 10,000 households which were visited four times in a 14-month period. The impact of participation in the social safety net programmes on household consumption is found to be generally positive. However, only the subsidised rice programme appears to have significantly reduced the risk of poverty among participating households.