At 20:50 20/10/2013 +1100, Brian Cooper wrote:
>Is there an evidence base for child protection practices? From the limited
>sample, I am dealing with, there seems an ideology of child protection, but
>not a reliable basis to the practice of removing children from their parents
>based on a poor understanding of probability and risk.
As for the "poor understanding of probability and risk", is the main issue
not simply a statement of the "statistically obvious"? - namely that, no
matter how good the evidence-base, the decision will necessarily be
probabilistic (hence sometimes 'incorrect') and that, for a given
'evidence-base' (and information about specific cases), the only way to
reduce the number of 'false negatives' (failures to remove children when
they should have been removed) is to accept an increased number of "false
positives". Society, parents and (probably most important) the media are
almost as intolerant' of false positives as they are of false negatives.
Cases which become 'high profile' usually seem to be ones in which (on the
basis of what we know) it seems to be fairly 'obvious' that the wrong
decision (in either direction) was made, but it's an incredibly
complicated, multi-factorial, situation and I'm sure that a high proportion
of cases are in a very difficult 'grey area'.
Kind Regards,
John
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dr John Whittington, Voice: +44 (0) 1296 730225
Mediscience Services Fax: +44 (0) 1296 738893
Twyford Manor, Twyford, E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Buckingham MK18 4EL, UK
----------------------------------------------------------------
******************************************************
Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your
message will go only to the sender of this message.
If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's
'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically
to [log in to unmask]
Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk.
*******************************************************
|