Estimating the additional cost of disability: beyond budget standards

Disabled people have long advocated for sufficient resources to live a life with the same rights and responsibilities as non-disabled people. Identifying the unique resource needs of disabled people relative to the population as a whole and understanding the source of these needs is critical for determining adequate levels of income support and for prioritising service provision. Previous attempts to identify the resources and costs associated with disability have tended to rely on surveys of current resource use. These approaches have been criticised as being inadequate for identifying the resources that would be required to achieve a similar standard of living to non-disabled people and for not using methods that are acceptable to and appropriate for the disabled community. The challenge is therefore to develop a methodology that accurately identifies these unique resource needs, uses an approach that is acceptable to the disabled community, enables all disabled people to participate, and distinguishes 'needs' from 'wants.' This paper describes and presents the rationale for a mixed methodology for identifying and prioritising the resource needs of disabled people. The project is a partnership effort between disabled researchers, a disability support organisation and academic researchers in New Zealand. The method integrates a social model of disability framework and an economic cost model using a budget standards approach to identify additional support, equipment, travel and time required to live an 'ordinary life' in the community. A survey is then used to validate the findings and identify information gaps and resource priorities of the community. Both the theoretical basis of the approach and the practical challenges of designing and implementing a methodology that is acceptable to the disabled community, service providers and funding agencies are discussed.