A major new report from UNICEF has put the the issue of children's wellbeing in the UK under the microscope. It's not the first time that the charity has published research about this topic - in 2007 its report An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries made headlines for placing the UK at the bottom of a league table of 21 developed nations.
UNICEF's latest research aims to explore the issue of wellbeing in more detail by making detailed comparisons of children's experiences from just three countries: the UK, Sweden and Spain. The findings are wide ranging: a key challenge for parents in the UK was being able to spend sufficient time with children, while another cause for concern was a culture of materialism and consumer pressure. Further analysis of the points raised by the report is covered by this BBC article.
The full title of UNICEF's new report is Children’s Well-being in UK, Sweden and Spain: The Role of Inequality and Materialism and it's available from this link. A shorter summary version is also available, and there's even a simple children's version.
2 comments:
Useful research, confirms many findings of SDC (ECFM) . A more comprehensive European study would be useful. Also- identify any links with child's performance at school? mk Education Dialogue Group
Hi Mairi
A couple of documents which might be of use to you: a 2009 CPAG report entitled Child Wellbeing and Child Poverty - http://www.cpag.org.uk/info/ChildWellbeingandChildPoverty.pdf - and a 2010 IOE study entitled Childhood Wellbeing: A Brief Overview - http://www.ioe.ac.uk/TCRU_StathamChase2010_FinalChildDFEwebsite.pdf - which both make repeated reference to education.
The previous government published a number of reports relating to wellbeing and achievement, but although they are indexed on the current DfE site, the links to them are not working, and I can't find them in the DERA site either, so I'm not sure how you'd get hold of a copy! Take a look at the posts tagged 'wellbeing' on this site to see which reports I'm referring to.
Regards
David
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