Over the last decade, the number of under-16s in receipt of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in England and Wales has doubled, reaching 682,000 in 2023, equivalent to one-in-sixteen children. This growing caseload has been driven almost entirely by awards made to children whose main condition is either a learning difficulty, behavioural disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): in 2023, four-fifths of all Child DLA awards were for children whose main condition was one of these three.
This rapid increase in children’s disability benefit awards has inevitable fiscal consequences. Children’s disability benefits remain a relatively small part of public spending, but nonetheless have more than doubled from £1.9 billion in 2013-14 to £4.0 billion in 2023-24, and are set to reach £6.4 billion by 2028-29 (all figures in 2024-25 prices). Moreover, this has knock-on impacts on working-age disability benefit spending: in 2023, more than four-fifths of initial Child DLA-to-PIP reassessments led to a PIP award.
However, alongside those young people who previously received Child DLA and whose claim for PIP at age 16 is unsuccessful is another group who simply do not go on to make a PIP claim (estimated to be 13 per cent of those receiving Child DLA in 2022). As a result, the number of young people in receipt of disability benefits falls by more than one-quarter between the ages of 15 and 17, a time when, at the cusp of adulthood, a smoother transition would clearly be ideal.
Finally, these benefit trends mirror the rising number of disabled children in Great Britain overall. Over the past decade, their number has increased by more than half a million to 1.2 million in 2022-23, with more than four-fifths of this increase being children with a social or behavioural impairment. It is arguably this trend that should be of greatest concern to policy makers today, not least because tackling the burgeoning child disability benefits caseload requires action at root.
The number of children in receipt of disability benefits has risen dramatically in the last decade
read the full report here – www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/growing-pressures/
