People with disability in Australia

Web report

Last updated: 03 Sep 2019

Author: AIHW

Media release

AIHW

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2019. People with disability in Australia. Cat. no. DIS 72. Canberra: AIHW. Viewed 21 October 2019, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia

APA

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2019). People with disability in Australia. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia

MLA

People with disability in Australia. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 03 September 2019, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia

Vancouver

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. People with disability in Australia [Internet]. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2019 [cited 2019 Oct. 21]. Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia

Harvard

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2019, People with disability in Australia, viewed 21 October 2019, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia

People with disability in Australia brings together information from a range of national data sources to contribute to a greater understanding about disability in Australia. It shows that some people with disability face challenges routinely and actively participating in everyday life areas (such as employment) and are more likely to experience poor health, discrimination and violence.

Highlights from this report are presented in People with disability in Australia: in brief

Cat. no: DIS 72

Findings from this report:

24% of adults with disability experience good or excellent health, compared with 65% of without disability.
32% of adults with disability experience high/very high psychological distress, compared with 8% without disability.
48% of working-age (aged 15–64) people with disability are employed, compared with 79% without disability.
47% of adults with disability have experienced violence after the age of 15, compared with 36% without disability.

Younger people in residential aged care

9 in 10 On entry to permanent residential aged care, 9 in 10 people aged under 65 have limitations in self–care.

1 in 3 On entry to permanent residential aged care, 1 in 3 people aged under 50 have limitations in all 4 core activities.

1 in 4 On entry to permanent residential aged care, 1 in 4 people aged 50–59 have limitations in all 4 core activities.

1 in 6On entry to permanent residential aged care, 1 in 6 people aged 60–64 have limitations in all 4 core activities.

Government-subsidised aged care in Australia is provided on need, not age. As such, sometimes even very young people take up permanent residential aged care to meet their care needs.

While for some people with disability, including some younger people, residential aged care is a setting of choice, generally younger people are considered to be better served by other services for their long-term care needs.

The Younger People in Residential Aged Care—Action Plan is an Australian Government initiative aimed at minimising the need for younger people to live in aged care facilities. Younger people who are eligible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), can also use their NDIS funding to access alternative accommodation and care arrangements.

What is meant by ‘younger’? Expand

There is no minimum age requirement to access government-subsidised aged care. For policy and planning purposes, however, people under the age of 65 years are considered ‘younger’ people in care. Typically, they have significant disability.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2015 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC), for example, shows that more than 97% of younger people in residential aged care have a disability, and 95% of these have severe or profound disability (ABS 2016). However, there is no direct way to identify disability using the available aged care data, nor is there information on why people enter (or stay in) permanent residential aged care.

On a given day, more than 6,000 younger people are in permanent residential aged care (about 3.3% of people in permanent residential aged care at 30 June 2018). This has changed only slightly over the past decade. In general, the number of admissions each year matches the number of discharges, keeping overall numbers relatively stable.

In addition to those living in permanent residential aged care, on average, more than 2,000 younger people are admitted for respite residential aged care each year (2,600 at 30 June 2018). They typically stay around 1 month.

To try to understand the needs and characteristics of younger people living in residential aged care, the rest of this section uses the AIHW’s Pathways in Aged Care linked dataset to describe the:

activity limitations of people aged under 65 who first entered residential aged care
extent to which their main medical condition limits their daily activities.

Pathways in Aged Care link map Expand

The best available measure of a person’s functional limitations comes from the assessment undertaken by an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT, or Aged Care Assessment Services in Victoria). These teams assess and approve access to subsidised aged care programs, such as residential aged care. The result is an Aged Care Assessment Program (ACAP) assessment which aims to comprehensively assess people’s needs and direct them to appropriate services (AIHW 2016).

To understand the assessment’s association to take-up of care, it is necessary to link assessment data with residential aged care data. The AIHW’s Pathways in Aged Care (PIAC) link map joins an aged care residents’ ACAP assessment record with their residential aged care record. This enables analysis of their activity limitations and medical conditions as identified at the time of their latest ACAP assessment, before moving into permanent residential aged care.

The linkage of ACAP data to residential aged care data has only been completed up to June 2014. During 2013–14, around 8,700 people aged under 65 were in permanent residential aged care. This included around 2,300 people aged under 65 admitted to permanent residential aged care for the first time in this financial year. Of these, around:

230 (10%) were under 50 years
900 (40%) were 50–64 years
1,100 (50%) were 60–64 years.

Aged Care Funding Instrument Expand

Another view of people’s care needs in permanent residential aged care is through the Aged Care Funding Instrument, which assesses a person’s need for support with activities of daily living, health care, and cognition and behaviour. This assessment tool does not take a ‘functional’ approach like other disability measures do.

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References

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2016. Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia: Summary of findings, 2015. ABS cat. no. 4430.0. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/4430.0

AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) 2016. National Aged Care Data Clearinghouse Data Dictionary. Version 1.0. Cat. no. AGE 80. Canberra: AIHW.

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