National Disability Agreement: c(1)-Proportion of the potential population accessing disability services, 2011

Number of users of state/territory delivered disability support services aged 0–64 years in the reporting period.

Estimated potential population for state/territory delivered disability support services (people aged less than 65 years with profound or severe core activity limitation) on 30 June at start of reporting period.

Potential population will be calculated by applying age-sex specific rates of severe/profound core activity limitation (from the Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC)) to the 30 June 2008 Estimated Residential Population by state/territory by age group by sex. No Indigenous weight or scaling factor is used.

National level age-sex rates, rather than state/territory-age-sex rates have been used previously due to the high sampling errors associated with some of the state/territory-age-sex rate estimates in SDAC 2003 and previous iterations of the survey. If rates are used from SDAC 2009 to calculate the potential population it is most likely that national age-sex rates will be again utilised due to timing restrictions. Once the SDAC 2009 CURF data are available, the AIHW will investigate the possibility of using state/territory data.

The method used to calculate the country of birth and remoteness disaggregations will be the same as that adopted by the Disability Services Working Group for calculation of special needs group indicators in the Report on Government Services 2010. This method incorporates 2006 Census data for comparing population groups.

Measures disaggregated by need for assistance in life area will not use potential population as the denominator. The denominator for these measures will be the state/territory total of the number of service users in the reporting period.

For each of the following service groups:

1. Accommodation support (service types 1.01, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04, 1.05, 1.06, 1.07, 1.08)

2. Community support (service types 2.01, 2.02, 2.03, 2.04, 2.05, 2.05, 2.06, 2.07, 2.08)

3. Community access (service types 3.01, 3.02, 3.03)

4. Respite (service types 4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 4.04, 4.05)

5. All disability support services delivered by state/territory governments

The following disaggregations will be presented:

• State/territory by sex (male, female, total) by age group (0–4, 5–14, 15–24, 25–34, 35–44,45–54, 55–64 years, total)
• Country of birth (Australia, other English speaking countries, all English speaking countries, non-English speaking countries, total)
• Remoteness Area (Major Cities, Inner Regional, other, total)
• State/territory by need for assistance (activities of daily living, activities of independent living or work, education or community but not activities of daily living, total needing assistance, no need for help or supervision, level of assistance not determined, total)
  

Rates of severe/profound core activity limitation from the SDAC will be used in the calculation of the denominator. SDAC 2003 is the latest available source for these data. Previous investigations have shown that these rates are stable over time.