Scottish Government Equality Outcomes: Disability Evidence Review

2 Context

Definitions

2.1 The Equality Act (2010) defines 'disability'^[1] as:

A person has a disability if s/he has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on that person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

2.2 It should be noted that some of the data sources cited in this Evidence Review, such as the Life Opportunities Survey^[2] , cover the whole of the UK and so are not specific to Scotland. This will be made clear in the text.

Demographics

2.3 In 2009, 23% of men and 27% of women in Scotland reported a limiting long-term illness or disability (Table 1)^[3].

Table 1: Percentage reporting a limiting long-term illness or disability in Scotland (Source: Scottish Government Scottish Health Survey, 2009)

2.4 There are also differences in types of impairment between age groups which are outlined in Table 2 - with older people more likely than younger people to experience most types of disability^[4].

Table 2: Impairment types by age group, 2009/11 (Source: Department for Work and Pensions (2011) Life Opportunities Survey Wave One Results)

2.5 Further results of Wave One of the Life Opportunities Survey in 2011 show that the prevalence of impairments or disabilities as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) increases considerably with age. For example, only one in ten adults aged 16 to 19 had an impairment (11%), whereas almost seven out of every ten adults aged 85 and over had an impairment (66%).

2.6 The Office for Disability Issues reports UK-wide trends in outcomes for disabled people^[5]. Many have improved since baselines were set, which was in 2005 for most of the outcomes - see the Office for Disability Issues Indicators on the website at www.odi.gov.uk. For example, it reports significant improvements for disabled people in educational attainment, employment rates and the employment rate gap, and in poverty rates. There have also been improvements in other factors contributing to quality of life, for example in access to transport (22% of disabled people experience difficulty accessing transport, down five percentage points since 2005) and access to goods and services (32% experience difficulty, down eight percentage points since 2005). Results from the British Social Attitudes Survey show that public attitudes towards disabled people have improved since 2005. However, despite this general picture of improvement, disabled people now report less choice and control over their lives than others, and there are still significant gaps between disabled and non-disabled people's outcomes (especially in education and employment).

Communication support needs

2.7 For the purposes of this Evidence Review, we will include communication support needs under the umbrella of 'disability'. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists^[6] identifies conditions commonly associated with communication support needs including:

• Learning Disability
• Autistic Spectrum Disorders, including Asperger's Syndrome
• Dementia
• Neurological Illness (e.g. Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinsonism, Epilepsy)
• Stroke
• Some cancers (head and neck, mouth, throat, brain)
• Head or Brain Injury
• Hearing Impairment
• Visual Impairment
• Cerebral Palsy
• Mental Illness (e.g. Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Depression)

2.8 The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists explains that "people can have Communication Support Needs due to developmental conditions or conditions acquired as they grow older. Anyone can have temporary communication support needs because of fatigue, illness, anxiety associated with new situations, stress, drugs, alcohol or other intoxicating substance."

2.9 The (then) Scottish Executive (2007) defined 'communication support' as "adaptations that individuals and organisations can make to facilitate the effective involvement of individuals with difficulties in understanding and making themselves understood"^[7] . This implies that without such support, individuals will be less involved and so face barriers to participating in daily life.

2.10 A literature review by the (then) Scottish Executive in 2007^[8] estimated that

between 1 and 2% of the population at any one time have such severe communication support needs that they need specific assistance in order to have their needs met. There is a much larger group, perhaps up to 20% of the population, who may experience some difficulties with communication at some point in their lives relative to the population as a whole. Although these figures are drawn from a number of sources and refer to a number of different countries it is reasonable to assume that they will be true for Scotland as they are for other countries.

2.11 The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists estimates that 250,000 people in Scotland have communication support needs^[9]. At approximately 5% of Scotland's population, this is substantially higher than the Scottish Executive estimate reported above - demonstrating the difficulty of collecting accurate population data for communication support needs. However, both sources agree on the figure of 20% for people who may experience communication support needs at some point in their lives.