ABSTRACT
The evidence is from a special count of the DH community care returns, the disk editions of the Social Services Statistics for financial years 1996 and 1997 published by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. The CIPFA data are unreliable for various reasons. They do not cover all authorities, many authorities objecting to supplying the data as a matter of principle. The number of authorities for which data are not provided is large enough to risk making the remainder a biased sample of the total. Data for successive years in some other authorities cannot be compared because of local government reorganisation. There is terminological imprecision about concepts
