Draft Disability Assistance (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023: draft child rights and wellbeing impact assessment

Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) Wellbeing Indicators

59. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 introduced a range of indicators used to measure children and young peoples' wellbeing. Our assessment of these amendments against this framework is:

60. Healthy: The amendments will help improve the health of disabled young people, by ensuring that they receive consistent financial support throughout potentially stressful periods of time, including during their transition to Adult Disability Payment, by contributing towards the additional costs of care and transport.

61. Achieving: By providing continuity of payment dates and ensuring no one is financially disadvantaged during the transition periods, the amendments will allow individuals to plan for their futures with more confidence and will directly contribute to enabling disabled individuals to engage in activities of their choosing including education, development opportunities and social activities.

62. Active: As outlined above, the amendments aim to ensure that no one is financially disadvantaged when moving between benefits and give young people confidence to continue to carry out their routines and activities throughout these periods. The provision of care or daily living and mobility components of both Child and Adult Disability Payment will provide funds to enable individuals, including young people, to engage in community activities of their choosing, ensuring that they have the option to choose to engage in community based activities and resources.

63. Respected: The principle of respect for the dignity of individuals is at the heart of the new Scottish social security system and specified in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. These amendments will further embed these principles, recognising that disabled individuals, including young people, have the right to engage in activities of their choosing and that we should facilitate this by ensuring that changes from one form of assistance to another does not impact on the timing of when receive the payment. The administration of these amendments has been designed to ensure that people are treated with dignity and respect and provided with a service that takes account of, and meets, their needs.

64. Responsible: Young people over the age of 16, who are able to manage their own affairs can receive Child Disability Payment directly rather than it being paid to a person (most often a parent) who is responsible for them and able to act on their behalf. This means in many cases young people moving from Child to Adult Disability Payment will be managing this aspect of their finances. The move to align the payment cycles when young people transfer from Child to Adult Disability Payment provides financial continuity which will support them to manage this transition. Whilst it is important that we enable young people to take responsibility for their affairs, we also acknowledge that this moving between benefits can be a stressful time. These amendments aim to smooth this transition further so individuals can take responsibility for their affairs with lessl anxiety.