Looked after children's participation in the development of on-line surveys of their well-being

This presentation will describe the: a) Development of indicators to capture the subjective well-being of children in care in England. Subjective well-being is defined as the way children feel about their lives and how they... [ view full abstract ]

This presentation will describe the:
a) Development of indicators to capture the subjective well-being of children in care in England. Subjective well-being is defined as the way children feel about their lives and how they are functioning.
b) Piloting of the surveys with 700 children and young people (age 4-18yrs) in six Local Authorities (LAs) and early results from the pilots.

In England, about 69,000 children and young people are looked after, primarily because of abuse and neglect. The impact of maltreatment can be long lasting and the quality of substitute care the child receives has a significant impact on children's developmental recovery. Yet little is known about how looked after children and young people feel about their own well-being. Do they identify the same elements as important to their well-being as those selected by children in the general population and how might their well-being be measured? In this presentation I will describe the development of on-line surveys to measure the subjective well-being of children in care. The work has been conducted by a partnership between the Hadley Centre for Adoption and Fostering Studies, University of Bristol (www.bristol.ac.uk/hadley) and CoramVoice, a children's rights charity ( www.coramvoice. org.uk).

Fourteen focus groups were held involving 140 children and young people to understand their perceptions of what was important to their well-being. Four key themes emerged: relationships, rights, resilience and recovery. Although there were domains of well-being, such as the importance of relationships that were held in common with children in the general population, looked after children identified other domains and their emphasis differed. Children emphasised the importance of relationships with foster carers, social workers and siblings and of being able to trust the adults in their lives. Unlike children in the general population, looked after children thought that having a coherent account of their histories and knowing the reason for being in care was crucial to their well-being.
Three on-line surveys were created for ages 4-7 yrs, 8-11yrs and 11yrs+ and taken back to three children and young people’s focus groups for comment. Questions were revised and reduced. A web designer developed the ‘look’ of the survey using best practice guidelines and with input from young people. The online survey has been piloted with over 600 children and is demonstrating that children as young as four years old are able to provide meaningful responses about their well-being. Children have found the survey easy to complete and survey findings have led to changes in practice. Work is on-going developing visualisations of survey data for social work managers ( http://www.coramvoice.org.uk/professional-zone/bright-spots)