Monday, November 24, 2008

Accuracy

It never ceases to amaze me how often news is reported with small mistakes that change the meaning such as 'women instigate the majority of divorces' when it should be 'women instigate the majority of divorce proceedings' or 'the largest divorce settlement' instead of 'the largest awarded divorce settlement.'

Sometimes numerical mistakes are made such as last week when I read somewhere the number of child deaths from abuse in England was 282 over a seventeen month period. This was a lot higher than I remembered. It appears I wasn't the only one confused, so was the NSPCC who say the number is much higher than their figures, which come from the government homicide statistics.

The Observer revealed yesterday the figure of 282 in an Ofsted report is 'misleading' and made up of all children who died while receiving any kind of local authority help - including terminally ill children receiving social care and accidental deaths of nursery age children. Phew, it's a relief to know I'm not going senile after all.

2 comments:

Anonymous,  25 November, 2008 01:20  

I think they call it spin, but that is shameful for an Ofsted report.
Certainly the government is back in control of the news agenda in respect of forced adoptions and social services and the public will be fully supportive of more intervention I am sure. The sad fact is, that however much intervention and pro active social care we have, we will still get many more Baby P's and the logical progression will also be a huge unaffordable bill for social services and many needles separations of children from their birth parents.

lynda 25 November, 2008 09:55  

The Odddesy , I have to agree with your comment on spin. I am a survivor of the Family Courts.
the system is in need of an overhaul.
The burning question now is how did a father get custody of a very sick child .Especially with so much background and a history for being violent.
Previous history of domestic violence. There is a lot of outrage he got custody. If research is referred to time and again then the risks for sexual abuse are higher in domestic violence as the violence escalates.
I do not know how the closed courts think it is their decision to take risks with such placements.

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