Provision of disability adaptations to the home: analysis of household survey data

The move towards greater provision of healthcare at home has been a significant policy intention for the last two decades (Ham et al. 2012). Key to this ambition is the need to provide suitable accommodation for disabled households by installing a range of possible adaptations. Using data from English Housing Surveys of 2003/4 and 2009/10, we compare levels of the provision of adaptations with a number of socio-cultural variables, and report on some significant correlations. This includes most importantly, bias against non-white disabled households and younger disabled households, a significant link between rented accommodation and disabled households, and a worrying increase in the proportion of adaptations deemed by the householders to be ‘not needed’, from 7% to 25%, over that six year time period. We discuss the context of these results and conclude with an outline plan for future research, which is urgently needed to verify and understand the issues raised.