Guidance

Attendance Allowance main disabling condition

Published 13 November 2013

Publication of Attendance Allowance (AA) main disabling condition on the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study (100%) Tabulation ToolLongitudinal Study (100%) Tabulation Tool

From November 2011 DWP is making improving the way AA main disabling condition is presented on the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study (WPLS) 100% tabulation tool by publishing a finer breakdown of main disabling condition. More detail is given below. The first data to be published will relate to caseloads at May 2011.There are no plans to update the sample tabulation tool to reflect this improvement.

Changes made to published disabling condition

Information is published on main disabling condition. This means that where more than one condition is present the main disabling condition is recorded. Prior to May 2011 analysis published classified an individual into one of 16 main disabling conditions and three composite main disabling conditions with the remaining conditions being grouped together in an “Other” category. From May 2011 onwards the main disabling conditions are published to the finest breakdown possible on the WPLS 100% tabulation tool. This means that the categories in the “Other” group are now disaggregated and categories previous grouped together as “Mental Health causes”, “Back Ailments” and “Deafness” are also now disaggregated ^{[footnote 1]}.

Changes in coding of disabling conditions made in October 2008

In October 2008 the disabling classification codes for claimants to DLA and AA were revised so that a much finer classification is available for new and reviewed cases. At the time of writing (September 2011) it is not possible to report on these finer classifications separately as the majority of cases recorded on the system are recorded under the old, less detailed classification system. Cases classified under the new finer scheme are allocated to one of the pre-existing classification groups for reporting purposes. The exception to this rule is where a condition recorded separately under new disabling code does not map directly to a pre-October 2008 classification. This occurs for the following cases:

“Cognitive disorder - precise diagnosis not specified”

consists of those cases where the precise cause of the cognitive disorder (e.g. due to a stroke or due to dementia) has not been specified. Under the pre October 2008 coding system these cases would have either had a missing disability code for statistical purposes or a decision would have been forced on the Decision Maker to allocate to “Dementia” or in the case of cognitive disorder due to a stroke “Cerebrovascular Disease”. Cases allocated before October 2008 will still have these classifications recorded for statistical purposes.

Infectious Disease categories

Prior to October 2008 infectious diseases were not allocated to specific Infectious Disease classifications. Instead they were allocated to the existing classifications that best described them: e.g. pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) would be allocated to “Chest Diseases” but other types of TB would have been allocated differently, e.g. Renal TB would have been allocated to Renal Disorders. From October 2008 onwards incidences of

TB of all types are recorded as TB and are reported in the table as “Infectious diseases: Bacterial disease – Tuberculosis”. An example of an infectious disease recorded as “Infectious diseases: Protozoal disease – other / precise diagnosis not specified” would be Giardiasis; pre-October 2008 this would have been most likely to be recorded in the “Inflammatory Bowel Disease” category as this would have given the closest fit to the condition. Cases allocated before October 2008 will still have these classifications recorded for statistical purposes.

Please note: From October 2008 Obesity, which would have previously been included in the general classification of “Behavioural disorder”, was allocated to a specific code (as were the other conditions formerly recorded under the umbrella classification of “Behavioural disorder”). From February 2010 all “Obesity” cases that could be identified (i.e. had been allocated using the new finer classification system) were reclassified under “Metabolic disease”).

Mental Health Causes: This consists of the categories: Psychosis, Psychoneurosis, Personality Disorder, Dementia, Behavioural Disorder and Severely Mentally impaired.

Deafness: This consisted of Deafness and Deaf/Blind.

Back Ailments: This consisted of Spondylosis and ‘Back Pain - other / precise diagnosis not specified’. Examples of categories that feed into the ‘Back Pain - other / precise diagnosis not specified’ group are Spinal stenosis and Scoliosis.

1. The 3 composite classifications which are published separately on the WPLS 100% tabulation tool but are still published in composite form on the sample tabulation tool are: ↩