Prevalence of disability amongst children in Gwent and Wales
Sparkle (South Wales) directly supports children and young people with disabilities and/or developmental difficulties, and their families, living in Gwent. Sparkle is the charity partner of Serennu, Nevill Hall and Caerphilly Children’s Centres, providing specialist leisure activities and holistic family support services from the centres and their catchment areas. The guiding principle for Sparkle is to ensure that children and young people with disabilities and their families are fully supported and able to participate in valued childhood experiences, with access to the same range of opportunities, life experiences, activities and community services as any other child and their family.
The request
Sparkle were looking to better understand the prevalence of disability among children in Wales and Gwent. They wanted to build a reliable evidence base of disability trends to understand how they are captured differently by different data sources. Sparkle wanted to find the true representation of child disability and use this to predict the trends over the next 10 years. This is to support them in meeting future levels of demand by helping them plan resources, funding and service development.
The approach
Began the project by building the evidence base of child disability trends over time. The sources used include the Census (ONS), Family Resources Survey (ONS), National Survey of Wales, Pupil Level Annual School Census (StatsWales), Children Receiving Care and Support Census (StatsWales), Disability Living Allowance data (DWP), and Integrated Service for Children with Additional Needs referrals (local health board via Sparkle). This helped to build a picture of the numbers of children with disabilities living in Gwent and Wales, and some sources provided information on their characteristics and type of disability.
Limitations included the varying definition of disability used and not all sources provided data for Gwent.
The result
Produced a report which included a summary of the findings from each source alongside visualisations and submission of a paper for BMJ public health. The main findings uncovered that statutory-report sources report 0.6-8% of children in Wales as having a disability, whilst family-report sources report 8-14%. The majority of sources report an increase in prevalence over the past 10 years; despite a predicted decline in the population of children in Wales and the UK, the prevalence of disability amongst children could rise to 17.5% by 2035 if this increase continues.
Impact and benefits
This project highlighted some very striking trends in childhood disability, which will be essential to Sparkle’s future service planning. The findings will also have implications for our colleagues in health and social care, and we are actively disseminating the report amongst relevant organisations, service leads and policy makers to raise awareness of the increasing prevalence and so that they can be prepared for growing demand for services. The project went very well; we received lots of information and regular contact from Statisticians for Society, and Lucy, our volunteer, was very engaged and accommodating. We are very grateful to Lucy and Statisticians for Society for their support and for helping us to ensure the needs of children with disabilities in Wales and Gwent can be met.
Volunteer: Lucy O'Brien
Charity contact: Bethan Collins