Skip to main content

Martin Narey and Adoption Statistics

I have recently had a look at This post which references Martin Narey's speech about adoption numbers earlier this year. In that speech he said:

I don’t think adoption can ever be suitable for other than a minority of children in care. But I think that minority is probably more than 5,000 or just 7% of the care population”
This goes to the nub of the statistical misunderstanding that has gone on for over a decade. The number of children in care is a static number. The number adopted per year is a number of children per year. You cannot sensibly compare one to the other. Because children stay in care for multiple years you need to look at the numbers of children going into care (per year).

I take the view that you need actually to ignore the children placed in care under S20 and also to concentrate on those for whom adoption is a likely option (the younger ones). The sad thing is that this innumeracy lies behind the drive to increase adoption numbers to stupid levels.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NHS reorganisation No 3,493,233

Followers of my blog will have seen the NHS question about how many reorganisations have we had. We've yet another. The number of PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) nationally is to halve. This means merging East and North. (and then probably HoB and south). It would be nice if people would stick with one structure. There is a quotation ( Which sadly does not appear to be a true quotation ) We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. But has to have been originated by someone. The web link shown goes through the derivation which appears to be more linked to an anonymous British Soldier WW2 than any Roman or Greek General called by a name perming 2 out of (Gaius, Galus, Petronius and Arbiter). From the...