Wednesday 21 April 2010

Classic headline misdirection alert

Violence against children is up! Admissions to hospital emergency departments for violence related injuries among under-1os rose by 8 per cent between 2008 and 2009.

But hang on, overall violence related admissions are down (slightly) on the year, and have fallen every year since 2001 except for 2007-2008 (when there was quite a strong upwards blip). And the rise among children may be due to more at-risk children being kept at home in violent conditions because of the troubles afflicting many social work departments (so it might be a political/structural problem creating the space for more violent incidents rather than an increase in the number of violent individuals).

So overall, a pretty mixed picture - some good news, some bad, with a genuine suggestion (although it is only that) that institutional problems are implicated. But sod that subtlety, make sure we have a scare-mongering headline suggesting, yet again, that children are more threatened and more in danger than they were yesterday.

See here for more details.

No comments:

Post a Comment