Childrens Understandings of Well-being: Towards a Child Standpoint [Paperback]

The book presented here describes an outstanding attempt, not only to include childrens views but to partner with children to develop the concept of well-being and to study the phenomenon as the children understand it. The authors do this by placing the concept of childrens well-being within the existing discourses on the topic and by developing their unique theoretical approach to the concept. Then, and based on what children told them, the authors identify different domains and dimensions of childrens well-being and touch upon its multifaceted nature. The book concludes with drawing research and policy implications from an integrated summary of the studys findings and lists indicator concepts that present an alternative framework and conceptualisation of well-being from a child standpoint.  

This book reports on the findings from a large, qualitative research project that set out to explore the views of children and young people across New South Wales, Australia on what constitutes their well-being. The research explores what meanings children and young people ascribe to the concept, and identifies key domains of well-being to be used to monitor the well-being of children, at a population level, throughout New South Wales (and beyond) in an ongoing way. The research was conducted by the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People in collaboration with researchers from the Social Justice and Social Change Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

The methodology for the project involved children as co-constructors of knowledge at the data gathering and analysis stages of the project. Central to this collaborative approach was the iterative nature of our engagement and dialogue with the children, before and during our research interactions with them. The research was conducted over three stages involving either individual or group interviews and employing l.