Review of 2021 Census Topics

Response 1073219593

Back to Response listing

What is your submission about?

Please provide a brief summary of your submission

Topic name
Working in the disability inclusion / access space, I have not found the Census data useful for my work. It doesn't tell us anything about the particular disability, or more relevant, access needs of residents. "Assistance with daily living" is incredibly ambiguous, and my recollection (this may be hazy though!) from last census was that it didn't make clear different age categories: my four year old requires "assistance with daily living", but his needs are vastly different to my 21 year old niece who uses a wheelchair and cannot communicate verbally.

Choose your area of interest

Please select one item
(Required)
Population
Sex and gender
Households and families
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Income and work
Unpaid work and care
Education and training
Ticked Disability and carers
Housing
Location
Transport
Cultural diversity
Religion
Other topic

Topics on Disability and carers

Choose one or more of the following topics that relates to your submission

Please select all that apply
Ticked Need for assistance
Unpaid care (due to the disability, long term illness or old age of another person)
Other/unknown

Assessment Criteria 1

1. This topic is of current national importance.

National Importance
"Need for assistance" is too ambiguous - it doesn't elaborate the possible types of assistance, whether or not that assistance is age-appropriate, and how much assistance. (Need for a cane to lean on when walking is quite different from needing an electric wheelchair and hydraulic hoist because you are a quadriplegic....).

Assessment Criteria 2

2. There is a need for data from a Census of the whole population.

For whole population
We need much more specific and better data which would greatly inform better delivery of National Disability Insurance Scheme (rather than the previous hodge-podge of information from state based disability systems), and could be used by Local Governments to better understand the disability data of their particular region in order to best plan delivery of accessible infrastructure.

Assessment Criteria 3

3. The topic can be accurately collected in a form which the household completes themselves.

Easy to answer
A questions could be formulated about disability type, or functional impact of disability (such as in NDIS assessments), or asking if the person is an NDIS participant.