Changing Capabilities and Needs of People with Handicaps: A Two-Year Follow-Up Study

A census-type survey of every household in the City of

canterbury identified 1,608 physically impaired people of whom 1,534 were subsequently interviewed. During the following two years the City's Social Services Department made special efforts to meet the needs of the more severely disabled people identified in the survey. At a subsequent follow-up survey, it was found that 206 people had died (13.4 per cent of those originally interviewed), 79 (5.1 per

cent) had been admitted to a hospital or residential home on a more or less permanent basis, and 75 (4.9 per cent) had left the district (including 8 people who were not traced). Ninety six people refused interview, so in the follow-up survey 1,078 people were interviewed,

representing 67 per cent of all those originally identified as physically impaired and 92 per cent of the original cohort who were still in private households in the City at that time. Information was obtained from the people interviewed in the follow-up survey about intervening episodes of serious illness and short-term admission to

hospital, and about changes in capabilities for self-care, seeing and hearing, and from the more disabled people among them about mobility, household activity, employment and social contacts.