Summary

This report presents data about services directly provided or funded by government, under the umbrella of the Commonwealth/State Disability Agreement (CSDA). These data come from the CSDA Minimum Data Set collection conducted in the second half of 1996. It covered almost all State, Territory and Commonwealth CSDA services.

Section 1 provides an overview of the service recipient and service data.

Section 2 describes the data collection, how it was conducted and indicates some of the limitations important for purposes of interpretation.

Sections 3 and 4 give a detailed description of the results of the 1996 data collection, concentrating mainly on the national perspective. Data are supplied on both the recipients of the services from a 'snapshot day' perspective and on the services themselves. Neither service nor service recipient data were collected this year by the Australian Capital Territory Government. The Commonwealth Government did not collect service recipient data this year from all its services, except its open labour market employment services.

Section 3 covers data collected from 68,488 Consumer Forms, representing people receiving services on the 'snapshot' day; a consumer can receive more than one service on the 'snapshot' day and therefore fill in more than one Consumer Form. Of service recipients in 1996, 58% were male and 58% were reported to have intellectual disability as the primary disability type. Many service recipients have multiple disabilities. Over 86% of recipients needed support in activities of daily living. Almost as many needed social and emotional support. Data on other disabilities, country of birth, Indigenous origin, language, method of communication, living arrangements, income source and State distribution are detailed.

Section 4 provides some detail about services. A total of 5,160 CSDA services responded to the 1996 CSDA Minimum Data Set collection-a response rate of 95%. Of these services:

  • 3,462 (67%) were provided under a non-government auspice, and 1,698 (33%) under a government auspice;
  • 2,336 of all services were accommodation services, 1,020 were community support services, 782 were employment services, 586 were community access services, and 395 were respite services.

Total reported CSDA funding of services was $1,263.67 million in 1995-96.

Section 5 contains many of the recently developed performance indicators for disability services, updated using this 1996 collection.

Section 6 contains a discussion of the data quality of the 1996 collection and outlines possible changes to future collections. There are a range of policy and administrative issues likely to affect on future collections, and the uses to which the data are put.

Frequency counts for Consumer Form data items are included at Table A.1.