Over the next 10 years, the number of children with complex needs across Wales has been rising steadily, and if these trends continue it is likely that their numbers will double over the next 10 years, according to our newest study found here.

The increase is largely driven by rising numbers of children with Autism or other forms of social/emotional impairments and learning difficulties, which will place huge demands on schools, healthcare and organisations supporting families.

One of the difficulties in estimating the numbers, is the variation in how different organisations count children with disability. It is clear that sources relying on family report of children meeting the definition of disability, eg the National Census, or Family Resources survey record far higher levels (8-14%), while those produced by Education or Social Care are lower (0.6-8%). This is partly due to each organisation using different definitions of disability (eg Stats Wales data for children receiving Care and Support excluded Autism up to 2023), or children with additional or special educational needs in School, where the categories have changed since the introduction of ALN Code in 2021.

Although more boys than girls are disabled overall, there has been a bigger increase in the number of girls with a disability than boys, which is likely to reflect increasing disagnoses of Autism in girls, particularly among teenagers.

Using all of these data sources, a volunteer statistician from Statistics for Society working on this report has calculated the probable trends over the next 10 years. The birth rate is predicted to fall, particularly in Wales where the population of children aged 0-19 years is projected to drop by 7% in Wales compared to 2% in the UK as a whole between 2023-2025. However, if disability keeps rising at the current rate, this means that by 2035, up to 17.5% of children in Wales would be disabled.

Clearly it is vital that policymakers plan now for these projected increases, which will impact Health, Education and Social Care, and these young people will continue to need support as they move into adulthood.