Exploring concepts of child well-being

Implications for children's services

Axford, Nick

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781847420657
• eBook ISBN: 9781847423399
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Children's Studies in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Policy reforms to children's services in the UK and elsewhere encourage a greater focus on outcomes defined in terms of child well-being. Yet for this to happen, we need not only a better understanding of what child well-being is and how services can improve it, but also the ability to measure child well-being in order to evaluate success. This book investigates the main approaches to conceptualising child well-being, applies them to the child population using household survey and agency audit data, then considers the implications for children's services. The author: provides a clear conceptual understanding of five perspectives on well-being: need, rights, poverty, quality of life and social exclusion demonstrates the value of each perspective charts levels of child well-being in an inner-London community, including violated rights and social exclusion sets out the features that children's services must have if they are to improve child well-being defined in these terms This book should be read by everyone involved in developing, implementing and evaluating children's services, including researchers, policy makers and practitioners.

Table of contents

• Exploring concepts ofchild well-being
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Need
• 3. Rights
• 4. Poverty
• 5. Quality of life
• 6. Social exclusion
• 7. Relationships between the concepts
• 8. Child well-being through different lenses
• 9. Relationships between the conditions
• 10. Matching conditions and service styles
• 11. Developing congruent children’s services
• 12. Conclusions
• Appendix A: Method
• Appendix B: Logistic regression
• Appendix C: The 60 variables
• Appendix D: Additional results
• References
• Index