Dorothy Lawton

75,000 SEVERELY DISABLED CHILDREN

This article explores the epidemiological potential of the computerised record of applications to the Family Fund, which contains details of75,000 children with severe disabilities in the UK. It illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the record, with an analysis of variation in the characteristics of the children and their families by principal handicapping conditions.

Area variations in infant mortality 1975-7.

Infant mortality rates vary from area to area. Part of this variation is due to the socioeconomic characteristics of the area and part to other factors including the obstetric, paediatric, and community health services. Four social indicators associated with infant deaths are used to control for some of the variations in socioeconomic characteristics and residual variation is then examined. The four social indicators are the level of unemployment, the proportion of large families, the proportion of lone-parent families, and the level of overcrowding.

Social Assistance and Territorial Justice: The Example of Single Payments

Social assistance in many countries is administered locally. Centralised, uniform schemes, such as those which operate in Britain are often assumed to guarantee, or at least to enhance, territorial equity, that is the equal treatment of individuals with identical needs irrespective of where they live. This assumption is examined with respect to the system of single payments—lump sum payments to meet exceptional needs—which existed prior to the 1988 social security reforms. Although much of the geographic variation in the volume of awards which used to exist is explicable in terms of variations in the level of need, territorial inequity is demonstrated to have occurred in what was a nationally administered and closely regulated scheme. The reasons for the inequity seem in part to have been due to variations in office work flow and working practices, welfare rights activity and unidentified processes linked in some way to the regional administrative structure of DHSS.

Child disablement, family dissolution and reconstitution.

The results of a study of a nationally representative sample of disabled children and controls are presented. The findings suggest that although, at any one time, families containing a disabled child are not no more likely to be one‐parent families, disabled children do appear to be more likely to experience a spell in a one‐parent family at some time in their lives. Where these spells occur, they are of longer duration than for the general population, which suggests that family reconstitution may be more difficult where a disabled child is present.