People with disability may need assistance to participate in social and economic life. Knowing what these activities are can help with planning services and building inclusive communities.
Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers
Data in this section are largely sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) 2018 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC). The SDAC is the most detailed and comprehensive source of disability prevalence in Australia.
The SDAC considers that a person has disability if they have at least 1 of a list of limitations, restrictions or impairments, which has lasted, or is likely to last, for at least 6 months and restricts everyday activities.
The limitations are grouped into 10 activities associated with daily living—self-care, mobility, communication, cognitive or emotional tasks, health care, reading or writing tasks, transport, household chores, property maintenance, and meal preparation. The SDAC also identifies 2 other life areas in which people may experience restriction or difficulty as a result of disability—schooling and employment.
The severity of disability is defined by if a person needs help, has difficulty, or uses aids or equipment with 3 core activities—self-care, mobility, and communication—and is grouped for mild, moderate, severe, and profound limitation. People who ‘always’ or ‘sometimes’ need help with 1 or more core activities are referred to in this section as ‘people with severe or profound disability’.
Three in 5 (60%) people with disability living in households need help with at least 1 of 10 activities of daily living (ABS 2019a). The most common are health care, property maintenance and household chores (Table ACTIVITIES.1).
Type of accommodation
The SDAC collects for people living in households and in cared accommodation.
Households
In the SDAC, households refer to private dwellings including self-cared accommodation for the retired or aged, and other private dwellings, including houses, flats, home units, garages, tents and other structures used as private places of residence.
Cared accommodation
Cared accommodation is usually long term and may be institutional in style. In the SDAC, cared accommodation includes hospitals, residential aged care, cared components of retirement villages, aged care hostels, psychiatric institutions, and other homes (such as group homes for people with disability). To be included the person must have been, or is expected to be, a resident of the cared accommodation for 3 months or more. The accommodation must include all meals for its occupants and provide 24-hour access to assistance for personal and/or medical needs (ABS 2019a).
The majority of people with disability live in households:
- 99% (or 2.4 million) aged 0–64 live in households and the remaining 0.6% (or 13,500) live in cared accommodation
- 91% (or 1.8 million) aged 65 and over live in households and the remaining 9.0% (or 174,000) live in cared accommodation (ABS 2019b).
Table ACTIVITIES.1: Type of activity people with disability living in households need help with, 2018 (%)
|
Type of activity
|
All with disability
|
Who need help with at least 1 activity
|
|
Health care
|
29.9
|
50.0
|
|
Property maintenance
|
27.1
|
45.3
|
|
Household chores
|
23.4
|
39.1
|
|
Mobility
|
23.0
|
38.5
|
|
Transport
|
21.1
|
35.4
|
|
Cognitive or emotional tasks
|
23.7
|
39.7
|
|
Self-care
|
15.2
|
25.4
|
|
Reading or writing tasks
|
9.5
|
15.8
|
|
Meal preparation
|
8.8
|
14.8
|
|
Communication
|
7.3
|
12.2
|
Source: ABS 2019a; 2019b.
People with disability living in cared accommodation (such as in residential aged care or hospital) usually have a higher need for assistance than those living in households. An estimated 91% of people with severe or profound disability living in cared accommodation, for example, always need help with at least 1 core activity (self-care, mobility or communication), compared with 48% of people with severe or profound disability living in households (ABS 2019b). See Type of housing for more information on people living in cared accommodation versus in households.
The types of support people with disability need vary according to their age, sex and level of disability (figures ACTIVITIES.1 and ACTIVITIES.2).