{"id":29435,"date":"2022-11-07T18:47:27","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T02:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29435"},"modified":"2022-11-07T18:47:27","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T02:47:27","slug":"loving-our-kids-with-a-little-help-from-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/loving-our-kids-with-a-little-help-from-the-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Loving Our Kids with a Little Help From the Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first glance, I thought Tom and David Chivers\u2019 book on understanding numbers and stats in the news looked like a dry read. I checked it out of the library, fully expecting to return it when I was done and not read it again. However, How to Read Numbers, A Guide to Stats in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them), <\/em>had me hooked in the introduction!\u00a0 <\/em>I found this book insightful, valuable, and even humorous!\u00a0 I\u2019ve been thinking about the content since I opened it and last week, I ordered my own copy to keep on my shelf with other good reads I plan to pursue in the future.<\/p>\n

The focus of the book is on how numbers are used in the media and how they can give misleading impressions.[1]<\/a> Chivers and Chivers point out that we need to be aware that often statistics represent real people or things that matter to people and therefore understanding how to present and read the numbers is a valuable skill.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 What numbers are misrepresented? What numbers can be trusted?\u00a0 Chivers and Chivers offer readers strong tools to use in decision making, as individuals and as a society.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

In my work, I desire to steer clear of presenting \u201cthe numbers,\u201d because in working with youth experiencing homelessness, we want to highlight the importance of each person, not reduce them to a number. However, funders and supporters want to know our numbers. So, we compile the numbers and, in many ways, this process has provided integral data in strengthening our program and developing increasingly meaningful experiences for the students we serve.<\/p>\n

Our program provides long-term housing for youth not able to live with their parents and not in the foster system, so that they can focus on school, graduate, and pursue their goals for college or career. We take referrals through the school districts and recruit volunteer home providers from the community to provide housing. When we began our program in 2010, we provided housing for five young people. The following year we provided housing for ten young people. This seemed like healthy progress to us. However, as we began applying for grants, we realized that we needed to more clearly communicate our work and student progress.<\/p>\n

We interviewed our various non-profit partners in the area to learn from them. There was one emergency youth shelter in our county and they provided housing for six youth at a time. Over the course of a year, they provided housing for nearly 60 teenagers. This seemed like a lot compared to our ten![4]<\/a> When we started to delve into the numbers, we realized a valuable fact. Youth at the emergency shelter could stay a maximum of sixty days. At that rate, the shelter could provide approximately 3,600 nights of housing. We ran the numbers on our program. Youth stayed in housing on average one or more years. In serving ten students, we provided 365 nights of housing times ten, which equaled 3,650. Our numbers were actually comparable to the shelter services. Upon discovering this, we changed the way we wrote our grants and delivered our information to supporters, to more accurately reflect the support students received through housing with a long-term home provider. We even added in the number of meals received in a year. Ten students in housing for one year, received the opportunity to have three meals a day, for a total of 10,950 meals.<\/p>\n

In our situation, looking closely at the numbers allowed us to more accurately present our work, more carefully serve students, and more strategically develop an effective program. We did similar studies on our graduation rates, the numbers of students needing housing in each school district, and the number of students with whom we worked, but did not house. We also used numbers to communicate the ways in which youth homelessness creates a pipeline to adult homelessness.[5]<\/a> It makes statistical and ethical sense to commit time and money to walking youth out of homelessness.<\/p>\n

This approach to numbers has been invaluable to our knowledge base and has informed not only our grantors, but our team, thus allowing us to be an effective partner in the continuum of youth housing services. Highlighting the numbers has allowed us to speak to the sobering fact that young individuals, full of potential and wanting to realize their dreams, are trying to navigate life by themselves and no youth should be walking through their teen years alone. There is much work to do and we, as community members and leaders, can attentively accompany each youth, so that they can choose healthy directions for their lives and that of their future generations. The facts are in the numbers, and upon close examination, these numbers allow us to more deeply invest in each and every youth.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Tom Chivers and David Chivers, How to Read Numbers, A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them) (London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2021), 2.<\/em><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Chivers, 2-3.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Chivers, 4.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> I believe strongly in the need for an emergency shelter in our community. The collaborative work within the continuum of services, short-term through long-term, is invaluable.\u00a0 There is no need to compete with each other, but simply a need for each organization to accurately describe their work in order to receive the funding needed to operate at full capacity.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America, <\/em>Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago in, https:\/\/schoolhouseconnection.org\/groundbreaking-research-on-youth-homelessness-youth-without-a-high-school-degree-young-parents-and-low-income-at-highest-risk\/<\/a>, November 14, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, I thought Tom and David Chivers\u2019 book on understanding numbers and stats in the news looked like a dry read. I checked it out of the library, fully expecting to return it when I was done and not read it again. However, How to Read Numbers, A Guide to Stats in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2076],"class_list":["post-29435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chivers","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29436,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29435\/revisions\/29436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}