search

• News
• Publications and reports
  • Children's issues reports
  • Ask the children
  • Annual reports
  • Child Death Review Team
  • Information sheets
  • Order publications
• Participation kit
• Training, seminars, events
• Speeches
• Links
• Book meeting rooms

< back

The NSW Commission for Children and Young People and the Social Justice and Social Change Research Centre, University of Western Sydney asked 126 children and young people across New South Wales about what well-being means to them.

This Ask the Children provides an overview of the study and the key themes that emerged.

Most research on children’s well-being defines well-being in terms of what is negative in children’s lives. It focuses on topics such as child health problems, child abuse and neglect or risk-taking behaviour. The consequence of this is that we know more about what we don’t want for our children than what we do want.

This approach is out of step with an increasing body of evidence showing that the best way to prevent negative outcomes for children is to promote well-being throughout their lives, rather than only responding to vulnerability and crisis. We need to know about and respond to both the positive and negative in children’s lives.

The other limitation in the well-being literature is the little that is known about what children and young people identify as well-being, what it looks like and the factors which affect their sense of it. This includes whether children and young people think about well-being in both positive or negative terms and whether they integrate these feelings in their life.

Download the pdf document from the link below (requires Acrobat Reader), or download the text version here.

Hardcopy: Not Available

Download this publication


< back