Homelessness: Not Just Another Statistic
By David Henderson, CEO of http://www.idealistics.org/
In Joel's recent post on statistics gathered for a biannual homeless count, he echoes a familiar mantra in social services:
"With the onslaught of numbers we sometimes forget that these numbers reflect real people. Real lives."
Properly collected statistics represent multipliers on the pain expressed in individual narratives. No matter how powerful an individual's story, statistics allow us to aggregate people's problems, illustrating how personal crises are actually social ones. Poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity are social issues of significant magnitude. Accurate statistics allow us to think about these issues in their proper context and scope.
However, collecting quality statistics and outcomes indicators in social services is difficult and complex. Perhaps we forget these numbers are supposed to represent real people not because we have too many statistics, but because our intuition tells us some of the numbers we report are wrong.
Just as a true story is more powerful than fiction, good data is more insightful than bad. The problem is that good data is hard to collect. For example, homeless counts are tricky because those who are homeless by definition lack an easily measurable permanent address, and evaluating social-outcomes is arduous because it is not always clear what "success" means in quantifiable ways.
Despite the difficulty of collecting good data, if numbers are to be powerful, they need to reflect reality. As a sector, our work-product is not how much we care about people who are hurting, it is how much we do for them. Good data helps us understand what we are doing well, and how we can improve.
I look forward to the upcoming INFORuM (LA Homeless Blog will become http://www.inforumusa.org/ on October 21st) where I will be a regular blogger engaging you about the possibilities and pitfalls of a more data driven, outcomes-oriented social service sector. Together we can move our industry forward toward a better understanding of how to collect and analyze data that accurately reflects real people's lives.
Most importantly, we can use accurate data to help make people's lives better.
(Pic from www.animatedsoftware.com)
In Joel's recent post on statistics gathered for a biannual homeless count, he echoes a familiar mantra in social services:
"With the onslaught of numbers we sometimes forget that these numbers reflect real people. Real lives."
Properly collected statistics represent multipliers on the pain expressed in individual narratives. No matter how powerful an individual's story, statistics allow us to aggregate people's problems, illustrating how personal crises are actually social ones. Poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity are social issues of significant magnitude. Accurate statistics allow us to think about these issues in their proper context and scope.
However, collecting quality statistics and outcomes indicators in social services is difficult and complex. Perhaps we forget these numbers are supposed to represent real people not because we have too many statistics, but because our intuition tells us some of the numbers we report are wrong.
Just as a true story is more powerful than fiction, good data is more insightful than bad. The problem is that good data is hard to collect. For example, homeless counts are tricky because those who are homeless by definition lack an easily measurable permanent address, and evaluating social-outcomes is arduous because it is not always clear what "success" means in quantifiable ways.
Despite the difficulty of collecting good data, if numbers are to be powerful, they need to reflect reality. As a sector, our work-product is not how much we care about people who are hurting, it is how much we do for them. Good data helps us understand what we are doing well, and how we can improve.
I look forward to the upcoming INFORuM (LA Homeless Blog will become http://www.inforumusa.org/ on October 21st) where I will be a regular blogger engaging you about the possibilities and pitfalls of a more data driven, outcomes-oriented social service sector. Together we can move our industry forward toward a better understanding of how to collect and analyze data that accurately reflects real people's lives.
Most importantly, we can use accurate data to help make people's lives better.
(Pic from www.animatedsoftware.com)
posted by LA's Homeless Blog at
8:00 AM
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