Let’s Talk about Child Well-being

Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), Wikigender and Wikichild invite you to participate in this online discussion.

“HOW SHOULD CHILD WELL-BEING BE MEASURED IN VIEW OF FUTURE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS?”

Open from Wednesday 19 June until Tuesday 2 July 2013.

The discussion will be officially launched at the HBSC 30th Anniversary Meeting and aims to spark discussion on the most effective means of measuring child well-being and how these measures should be applied to upcoming development frameworks.

This discussion seeks to explore a variety of questions including:

1. What is the actual state of child well-being today?
2. What are the most important domains of well-being – specifically for children?
3. What policies have had the most impact on children in the past? 
4. Should there be a child development goal in the Post 2015 framework?

We would like to hear your views, lessons learned and best practices or policies on measuring child well-being.

Background

Measuring child well-being has traditionally rested on economic measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP); however, it is now widely accepted that the well-being of the nation is influenced by a broad range of factors including economic performance, quality of life, the state of the environment, sustainability, equality, as well as individual well-being.

Over the last decade, organisations around the world have been developing new indicators of progress that look beyond GDP and economic growth when measuring child well-being.

The well-being of children is high on the agenda for policy makers and this online consultation, hosted by Wikichild, seeks to engage discussion on the most effective means of measuring child well-being and how these measures should be applied to upcoming development frameworks such as the Post-2015 agenda.

You can post a comment in a few clicks by going to the “Contribute!” section of the online discussion page. Here is the shortened link to the discussion page: http://bit.ly/19ECjl  and the hashtag for Twitter is #childwellbeing .

To find out more about the questions asked and how to participate, please click here.

Make sure your voice heard!

Robbie Lawrence,

Wikichild Coordinator