Scottish Government

6 ACTIVITIES AND SERVICES OF DISABILITY ORGANISATIONS

6.1 This project looked at the activities of disability organisations, in two ways: their primary activity - what their main role/remit is and secondly at other complementary or secondary activities. For example a carers' group primarily established to provide peer support may also provide information and advice.

6.2 Firstly the research team assigned all organisations on the database their primary activity or service. This categorisation of the organisations allowed the project to map the disability sector in Scotland. Where an organisation was found to provide more than three primary activities, they were allocated to the 'multiple activity' category.

Table 6.1: Primary activity of identified organisations

(Source: Mapping Database)

6.3 Using this categorisation it can be seen that local organisations are more likely to focus on one service or activity, whilst national organisations tend to have a broader range of activities. Over a third (37%) of national organisations provide multiple services compared to only 12% of local disability organisations.

6.4 The most common activity (21%) for local disability groups is the provision of care and support services to disabled people. This includes day care, home care, personal care, respite services, befriending etc.

6.5 The provision or facilitation of self help and support - such as support groups for parents, is solely provided by local groups. National organisations may of course be involved in this activity - as one of its multiple activities - but it is not the primary activity of any national organisation.

6.6 Categorising only the primary activity of an organisation can disguise the diverse and multi-faceted nature of the sector. For this reason, we also asked organisations responding to the survey to indicate, from a given list, all the areas they were involved in and the services provided. Organisations could indicate as many areas as were relevant. This approach provides a clearer illustration of the range and scope of activity within the sector.

6.7 Using this multiple response approach illustrates that, among the ten most common activities undertaken by disability organisations, eight are the same at both national and local level.

Table 6.2: Top ten activities of disability organisations

(Source: Online Survey; 440 of 505 organisations provided data)

% do not add up to 100 as organisations could indicate more than one activity

6.8 The most common activity reported by national organisations was training, (32%) and by local organisations it was carer/family/parent support (28%). General information and advice was the second most common activity or service for both local and national organisations (31% and 28% respectively). Whilst research was an activity among 23% of national organisations, this was reported as an area of work by only 6% of local organisations.

6.9 The services and activities indicated least by both national and local organisations were:

• benefits/money advice and debt management
• mediation
• citizen advocacy
• housing
• direct payments support