Being disabled in Scotland; a health outcomes perspective

The recently released research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Being Disabled in Britain; makes for depressing reading.

From an equality and human rights perspective, the report brings together evidence that highlights the gaps that continue to exist between disabled and non-disabled people in Britain. Published on the 3rd April, the EHRC’s report looks in detail at six keys areas of social inclusion including education, work, health, justice and participation in politics, to examine the progress and barriers to being disabled in Britain today. Now being considered as the most comprehensive review of disability equality in decades, I would like to highlight the pertinent issues in respect to health facing disabled people in Scotland.

With the integration agenda beginning to be implemented, health care and health outcomes have been topics of much debate in Scotland in recent years. Conducting this research, the EHRC looked at data from the National Performance Framework, which provides a breakdown of the statistical differences between disabled and non-disabled people’s experience of healthcare. Their key finding shows that 25 per cent of disabled people report having a bad, or very bad, health status, compared to just 0.5 per cent of non-disabled people. This figure rises to 36 per cent for people with a mental health issue or learning difficulty. Referring to the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee 2015 findings, the main factors in health and inequalities can be explained by the higher proportion of disabled people living in poverty and material deprivation, and reduced access to public services including transport.

Meanwhile, the report goes on to discuss the inequality of health outcomes amongst people with a mental health issue, including the headline statistic that on average people with a mental health issue have a 10-year shorter life expectancy than the general population in Scotland. Supporting people with mental health issues, the report finds, has mainly been the responsibility of GP’s with 25 per cent of people with mental health issues accessing treatments through primary care. While the Scottish Government has set a target for accessing treatment within 18 weeks, the report finds that the majority of health boards in Scotland are failing to meet this target. This situation is mirrored in children services with children and young people often having been treated far away from home and under development of community based therapeutic services. The EHRC considers that these issues remain a concern even though the Scottish Government has invested in adult services between 2016-20.

Read in its totality, the report paints a depressing picture of the barriers that disabled people face across Britain. While in Scotland, as the report appreciates, there has been a strong commitment, and corresponding policy initiatives to increase disabled people’s access to health and improve their health outcomes, there remains a lack of direction which is resulting in sustained poor health outcomes and delayed waiting times for critical support.

The ALLIANCE has been instrumental in the development of rights-based and person-centred approaches to health and social care integration. As Integrated Joint Boards establish themselves and partnership working is entrenched as the mode of delivering health and social care across Scotland, it is the ALLIANCE’s goal to support disabled people to be empowered and be able to voice their views about their own health and social care outcomes. In doing so, we believe that a co-produced agenda for health and social care can break down the barriers to living with a long-term condition in Scotland.

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