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Getting the Measure of Child Health and Development Outcomes (1): A Method for Use in Children’s Services Settings

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Abstract

Measuring child well-being is an important basis for planning needs-led children’s services and charting their impact on outcomes. The quality of this work in the UK varies widely and little of it gets used in policy and practice. This article examines an attempt to develop and implement a new instrument to address these problems. The setting is an urban local authority seeking to plan and develop services in the context of a renewed focus on outcomes and multi-agency working. The article describes the development and implementation of an epidemiological survey of child health and development outcomes with a sample of children selected to be representative of all children aged 0–18 in the city. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the approach and considers future challenges as regards conceptualising child well-being, enhancing participation in such surveys and exploiting the data that emerges.

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Notes

  1. See, for example: http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/, http://www.promisingpractices.net/, http://nrepp.samhsa.gov/

  2. http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk.

  3. www.sdqinfo.com

  4. ‘Higher-order’ categorisation means that a parent reporting the use of a physical aggression—the highest order category—does not exclude the use of lower-ordered misbehaviour response tactics (verbal reasoning and psychological aggression).

  5. www.ofsted.gov.uk

  6. Parents of children aged two and above were asked if, and how often, they had done the following: (a) smacked or slapped their child on the hands, arms or legs; (b) smacked or slapped the child on the face, head or ears; (c) grabbed, pushed or handled their child roughly; and (d) shaken their child.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge funding for this work from the local authority concerned. We would also like to thank all colleagues past and present who have been involved in the surveys, in particular Vashti Berry, Nick Gornall, Helen Harris, David Jodrell, Annemieke Kalsbeek, Dwan Kaoukji, Michael Little, Louise Morpeth and Rebecca Whear.

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  1. The Social Research Unit, Lower Hood Barn, Dartington, TQ9 6AB, UK

    Nick Axford & Tim Hobbs

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  1. Nick Axford
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Correspondence to Nick Axford.

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Axford, N., Hobbs, T. Getting the Measure of Child Health and Development Outcomes (1): A Method for Use in Children’s Services Settings. Child Ind Res 4, 59–80 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-010-9074-2

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