ONS may stop publishing mortality data on homeless people
ONS may stop publishing mortality data on homeless people
Charities say move is ‘deeply concerning’, while Office for National Statistics claims data was not accurate enough
proposed changes to official figures that the ONS says will provide “an improved and more efficient health and social care statistical landscape”.
Ah yes, because the first thing I always think when reading about any deaths among the homeless is 'is this statistical landscape efficient?'
12Is that sociopath speak for “nobody cares about these deaths so why are we wasting money tracking them”?
9You should. If government level decisions are being made based on this data, we should know that it's sound. Otherwise people resort to using gut feel to solve problems.
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So the ONS is - in my opinion - pretty awesome. I think it's unlikely that they will be caving to political pressure. From what I can tell, they are basically saying the quality of the data sucks - they tried collecting it for 5 years and it didn't really work.
11Edit: I got the annual homeless survey and mortality figures confused.
So I deleted the comment. But that looks bad, so now I've added this explanation.2
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An official count of the deaths of homeless people would no longer be published in England and Wales under proposals to increase the efficiency of health data that campaigners have called “callous”.
The plan is included in a series of proposed changes to official figures that the ONS says will provide “an improved and more efficient health and social care statistical landscape”.
The homelessness charity Crisis, which is urging the government to make a U-turn, said the plan was “deeply concerning, and will only ensure this needless suffering continues out of sight”.
“The injustice faced by people dying on the street must not go unreported,” said Francesca Albanese, executive director of policy and social change at the charity.
Taylor said scrapping the statistic would be “a very callous thing to do at a time when we know there is an absolute crisis in homelessness and more people are dying”.
But Sophie Boobis, head of policy, said: “With homelessness and rough sleeping increasing, we should be investing further in this important data series rather than scrapping it, allowing ourselves the chance to prevent further premature deaths.”
The original article contains 433 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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