I’d like to do some analysis on the some of the numbers given during CCAA’s recent tour. For reference, here are the numbers I’ll be using:

• Wait likely to be 2.5 to 3 years
• Two years by end of 2007
• 15 day batches in 2008

Let us assume they are going to refer the first half of December 2005 in early December 2007. From Nov 8 to Dec 15th there are 669 poll families. Divide 669 by 6 and you get 112 poll families per month.

Remember this little table?

I think that expecting only 112 poll families per month on average tells us that the numbers are going to remain quite low for this calendar year. They’ve averaged 121 poll families over the past three months.

I had heard rumors that the yearly ceiling was going to be lower this year than last year. Is that the case? Or is the problem that the orphanages no longer see the $3,000 as incentive to prepare babies for IA? I don’t know, but I’ve been trying to figure out the “why” of all of this in an effort to figure out when or even IF things might speed up at least a little. With the information that the CCAA expects to go back to half months after the first of the year, maybe the “why” of things isn’t so important for our analysis. Whether they expect the orphanages to start charging more, or whether they know the ceiling next year will be raised and they’ll be allowed to refer more, the important thing for this analysis is that they have reason to think they’ll be back to half months in January.

What might that mean for the long term? If we assume they will refer the end of December 2005 in January 2008, and if we assume it will take two months to get through every month then they will refer the last of May 2007 in November 2010. I personally think it will take at least three months to get through March, but for simplicities sake I just figured it at two months every month. Under that logic the maximum wait would be three years and six months. Or 3.5 years, which is longer than the three years they said. However, maybe they know that they’ll be doing a year of 2:1 and then begin doing 1.5:1? Maybe. But as big as the first few months of 2007 are, that’s kind of hard to believe.

Alright, let’s change things around and look at the backlog numbers and referral numbers given:

• Combined SN and NSN: 600 to 700 matches per month
• Combined SN and NSN: 30,000 dossiers in 2006
• Combined SN and NSN: 10,000 dossiers January through May 2007

Many agencies out there are very close to 50/50 on their SN and NSN numbers. The biggest agencies do not have these kinds of ratios because they don’t get lists that big, and some of the smaller agencies are doing as much as 90% SN now with only about 10% NSN. My guess is that the total numbers are somewhere between 50/50 and 60/40.

Another way to look at it is that some recent batches have been in the neighborhood of 200 and 300 NSN matches. Those numbers come from agencies who say they got the number from the CCAA. This means that if the 600 to 700 number is correct then at least for the last few months there have been more SN than NSN matches made.

Let’s assume that the rest of 2005 would have had 3500 dossiers before attrition. Let’s assume 8% have completely pulled out, and another 25% have switched to SN and are home with their babies. That leaves 2,350 NSN families waiting on a referral that we are told will receive a referral in the next six months. And if we assume 300 families a month will receive a SN match for the next six months then 4,150 families will get a referral over the next six months. That’s 691 matches per month, combining SN and NSN. That’s the upper end of 600 to 700, which lends weight to seeing part of December in January.

Moving along, starting in January of 2008, if they have referred December, the backlog will be 40,000. Multiply by .67 and we get about 27,000 families waiting on a NSN referral.

But, where do we go from there? We can (and did) subtract out the people who will switch to SN and who will drop out and hope to be in the right neighborhood. But there will be people sending dossiers over the next three years for SN children, and their numbers will add to that 27,000. I don’t know how to add those in over that kind of span.

Which means we have to just concentrate on the NSN numbers, which means we have to do some guesswork about ratios.

If we divide the 27,000 by 300 we get 90 months. If we use 400 we get 68 months. Obviously, the CCAA expects to get through the backlog faster than that. How much faster? They expect to get through it by May of 2010 (a three year wait for the May of 2007 families), that is 28 months after January of 2008. If we divide 27,000 by 28 months, that’s 965 NSN referrals a month. If they are only doing 200 SN on top of that (and they are likely doing a lot more) then we’d be looking at 1265 matches per month. I’m sorry, I just can’t see that happening.

In summary:

• I completely see how they are going to be at two years at the end of 2007.
• I don’t see how they are going to keep it to three years for a maximum wait, much less two and a half. I fear that the three year number is just another step we’ve been given, like one year was, and 14 months, and 18 months.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 10:04 pmand is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.