Take-up rates of Scottish benefits: November 2024

Child Disability Payment Take-up Analysis

Introduction

As part of work to increase the scope of analysis of take-up of Scottish benefits, this section contains analysis of trends in Child Disability Payment and discussion of how estimates of eligibility and take-up rates could be approached. Due to significant challenges in estimating the number of people eligible for any disability payment, this section does not contain an estimate of take-up for Child Disability Payment. Instead, this section contains three illustrative potential approaches to produce estimates and analysis of the merits and drawbacks of these. Robustly estimating eligibility and take-up for disability related benefits is a significant challenge. There are no official estimates of take-up rates of disability benefits in the UK published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Scottish Government or any other stakeholder.

Child Disability Payment was rolled out nationally in November 2021 after months of piloting. It replaced Disability Living Allowance for children (DLAc) in Scotland. Child Disability Payment is designed to mitigate some of the additional costs of care and mobility support for a disabled or terminally ill child or young person. The benefit is within devolved competence and delivered by Social Security Scotland.

Eligibility

Child Disability Payment provides support for the extra costs that a disabled child might have. Applications can be made for a child under the age of 16, however Child Disability Payment can be paid until the child reaches 18 and can sometimes be paid after the child turns 18.

Eligibility for Child Disability Payment is broadly similar to DLAc in England and Wales. Child Disability Payment is made up of 2 components:

1. Care

2. Mobility

The Care component has 3 payment rates:

• Lowest – paid if the child either:

  a. needs attention from someone, for a significant part of the day, in connection with their bodily functions due to a physical or mental disability

  b. is 16 or older and, due to a mental or physical disability, is unable to prepare a cooked main meal for themselves

• Middle – paid if the child either:

  a. needs frequent attention from someone during the day, or prolonged or repeated attention at night, in connection with their bodily functions due to a physical or mental disability

  b. needs continual supervision during the day, or another person to be awake for a prolonged period or at frequent intervals at night, to avoid substantial danger to themselves or others

  c. gets renal dialysis treatment, during the day or at night, at least twice a week

• Highest – paid if the child either:

  a. needs frequent attention from someone during the day, and prolonged or repeated attention at night, in connection with their bodily functions due to a physical or mental disability

  b. needs continual supervision during the day, and another person to be awake for a prolonged period or at frequent intervals at night, to avoid substantial danger to themselves or others

  c. gets renal dialysis treatment, during the day and at night, at least twice a week

  d. is terminally ill

The mobility component has 2 payment rates depending on the level of mobility support required^[1]

Trends in Disability Prevalence

Although eligibility for Child Disability Payment cannot be simply tracked to trends in disability as measured by established surveys, it is reasonable to expect there to be a link between trends in those measures and trends in eligibility.

Figure 4 shows that, according to the Family Resource Survey, in 2012-13, around 7% of children in Scotland and England and Wales were disabled. By 2022-23 this had risen to 10% in Scotland and 11% in England and Wales. However, broadly speaking, disability prevalence in Scotland and England and Wales has tended to be very similar over time. Differences in specific years may be explained by smaller survey sample sizes in Scotland reflecting slightly higher volatility in rates between years.

Source: Family Resource Survey individual dataset, Stat-Xplore. 2020-21 removed due to data quality

People in Receipt of Child Disability Payment

Applications to Child Disability Payment, or any other benefit, are assessed against eligibility criteria so not all applications are successful. The overall application success rate of Child Disability Payment since its launch^[2] in July 2021 is 76%, meaning that 76% of processed applications were authorised.

Source: Social Security Scotland - Child Disability Payment: high level statistics to 30 September 2024

Figure 3 below shows how the number of people in receipt of Child Disability Payment has increased in Scotland over time. This reflects both cases transferred from Disability Living Allowance for children and also new applicants.

Source: Social Security Scotland - Child Disability Payment: high level statistics to 30 September 2024

The latest published Child Disability Payment caseload^[3] of children aged 0-19 was 86,770 in September 2024^[4], of which 33% of recipients were in receipt of the care only component, 67% in receipt of both the care and mobility components, and less than 1% in receipt of only the mobility component. Children aged 0-17 comprise the majority of the caseload, and for September 2024, 84,915 were in receipt of payments.

Challenges in Estimating Take-Up

As take-up is a measure of the number of people who receive a benefit as a proportion of those who are eligible, calculating the level of benefit take-up requires us to estimate the size of the eligible population. It is more straightforward to estimate eligibility for low-income benefits, where eligibility depends on household characteristics and qualifying benefit receipt and where data is more easily accessible.

Household survey data showing the prevalence of medical conditions and disabled people in the population could be used to establish eligibility for disability benefits, however there are several reasons why this is problematic and unlikely to be robust:

• Disability related questions that are currently asked in surveys may not capture all of the eligibility criteria for disability benefits.
• Social Security Scotland make person-centred decisions based on the specific circumstances of the application/review and detailed information provided. Therefore, it is not possible to match those identified as disabled through surveys with those determined to be eligible for disability benefits.
• Disability is self-reported in surveys which means perceptions of disability may vary person to person and do not reflect an objective measure of the eligible population.

Overall, for the reasons set out above, the number of people who meet definitions of disability in surveys is unlikely to align with the eligible group for Child Disability Payment or disability benefits in general.

Illustrative Eligibility Definitions

As above, there are no known robust approaches to estimating eligibility for Child Disability Payment. However, this section sets out three illustrative approaches, partly to demonstrate the challenges present and the wide range of estimates of eligibility these alternative approaches can produce. These approaches are based on:

1. Family Resources Survey - Those who identify as having a disability under the Equality Act 2010 core definition

2. Census - Those who identify as having a disability or health condition

3. Scottish Health Survey - Those who have a disability which limits day-to-day activities

All three of these approaches, for reasons previously discussed, cannot be currently used to arrive at a robust estimate of take-up for Child Disability Payment.

1. Family Resources Survey - Equality Act 2010 Core Definition

Using Family Resource Survey (FRS) data published in StatXplore for financial year 2022-23, we estimate around 90,000 children in Scotland aged 0-17 were identified as disabled under the Equality Act 2010 core definition, meaning they “have a physical or mental impairment that has a 'substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on their ability to do normal daily activities". Where 'substantial' means more than minor or trivial, and 'long-term' means 12 months or more^[5]. This estimate assumes the responses in age bracket 16-19 are distributed evenly across all individual ages.

However, this definition does not fully align with the eligible group for Child Disability Payment, there may be some children who identify as disabled under the Equality Act 2010 core definition but who would not be successful in applying for Child Disability Payment. Similarly, there may be children who would be successful in applying for Child Disability Payment but who do not identify as having a disability by this definition. Given latest statistics on the number of children currently in receipt of Child Disability Payment, this may be too narrow a definition.

2. Scotland’s Census 2022 – Disability or Health Condition

We can also use disability and health questions from Scotland’s Census 2022^[6] to try to estimate eligibility for Child Disability Payment. For example, we could use the number of children aged 0-17 who report their disability limits their day to day activities a lot or a little. This is similar to the Equality Act 2010 core definition and results in an eligible total of around 85,000. We could also use the number of children aged 0-17 who report having a long term illness, disease or condition, this results in an eligible total of around 55,000. Although they cannot be compared directly due to differences in time periods, given the latest caseload of Child Disability Payment for children aged 0-17 was around 82,000 in June 2024, both these definitions would under-estimate eligibility and be too narrow a definition.

We could also use the total number of children aged 0-17 who report any health condition at all, which results in a total eligible figure of around 125,000. However, there is significant uncertainty around the extent this would align with the Child Disability Payment eligibility criteria set out earlier. It is very likely this total would include children who would not be eligible for Child Disability Payment. There would also be significant challenges around aligning census data, updated every 10 years, with any annual estimates of take-up rates.

3. Scottish Health Survey – Limiting Long Term Condition

Alternatively, the Scottish Health Survey 2022^[7] indicates that 15% of children (aged 0-15) have a limiting long-term condition. Assuming this proportion is the same for children aged 0-17 and then applying mid-2022 population estimates^[8] results in an eligible total of around 150,000. This is much higher than most other eligibility estimates, including even the already too broad Census definition reporting any health condition. This approach is likely to include people who would not be eligible for Child Disability Payment and to be a significant over-estimate of the number of children eligible for Child Disability Payment.

Summary

The illustrative definitions of Child Disability Payment eligibility set out produce a wide range of eligibility ranging from between 55,000 to 150,000 children, with significant uncertainty that any definition is a precise measure of eligibility for the payment. Due to the complex nature of assessing eligibility for disability payments, significant challenges remain in establishing a reliable measure from available data sources, however, by further analysing these and exploring if there are opportunities for using new data sources, we will continue to investigate approaches to estimate eligibility and take-up for Child Disability Payment.