Estimating the impact of the new definition of terminal illness for disability assistance in Scotland: research

Estimating the impact on the number of people receiving Disability Assistance

For ADP, we can estimate the increase in the number of clients due to BASRiS by splitting clients into three groups:

• People who would have received the assistance under DS1500, but due to BASRiS will receive it for longer. This is because they can apply earlier, before they have a prognosis of 6 months.
• People who are terminally ill but would not have applied under DS1500 and would have received the assistance under general rules. These are people who, under the DS1500 system, applied under the general rules rather than special rules for terminal illness, but will apply under special rules when BASRiS is introduced.
• New clients who would not have received disability benefits, under either the general rules or special rules for terminal illness, without the introduction of BASRiS.

To calculate how many people would have received assistance under the general rules but instead apply under BASRiS, we considered how many people currently move from receiving assistance under general rules to special rules for terminal illness and assume this will increase by around 90%, the same as the overall assumption for the increase in people successfully applying due to terminal illness. This means we are assuming the same increase in successful applications from both people who are new to the assistance or people who are already receiving the assistance under the general rules changing to receive the assistance under special rules for terminal illness. Information on the number of people who change from receiving assistance under the general rules to receiving because they are terminally ill isn't available for AA or child DLA.

The outputs from the Delphi study suggest around half (55%) of the estimated ADP clients receiving the assistance because they are terminally ill would have also received it under DS1500 rules, but due to BASRiS receive it for longer. Around 15% of the people receiving ADP because they're terminally ill wouldn't have received it through DS1500 rules but would have received the assistance under the general rules. The estimated remaining 30% of people wouldn't have received ADP without the introduction of BASRiS.

For PADP and CDP, given the lack of information available on how people move from receiving assistance under the general rules to receiving assistance because they're terminally ill, we assume that anyone who wouldn't have received assistance under DS1500 is new to the benefit.

The estimated number of people who will be receiving disability assistance at any one time because they are terminally ill is shown in Table 3.

Totals may not sum due to rounding.