Well‐being: the next revolution in children's services?
| Pages | 41-50 |
| Published date | 01 April 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200600005 |
| Date | 01 April 2006 |
| Author | Bill Jordan |
41
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 1 Issue 1 April 2006
©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Ltd
Abstract
The concept of ‘well-being’ is entering into the policy debate on the back of recent research on
‘happiness’ – self-assessed evaluations of quality of life. It stands for a reassertion of relationships and
feelings as central to positive evaluations and against the competitive and consumerist ethos of market
individualism. Although the findings of research on well-being among adults need to be adapted to suit
children’s situations and perceptions, work on this is in progress. This article presents some of the issues
for measuring children’s well-being and for comparing measurements between countries. It also
considers the implications for children’s services of an approach that re-values the relational elements in
human service work, and argues that coherence between services is as important as the outcomes of
interventions with individuals and families.
Key words
well-being; quality of life; happiness; children’sservices; economic theoryof services
1Professor of
Social Policy,
Plymouth and
Huddersfield
Universities,
Reader in
Social Policy,
London
Metropolitan
University
The concept of ‘well-being’ is now entering public
policy rhetoric as a companion to the ThirdWay
buzzwords that haveproliferated since 1997 –
‘choice’, ‘partnership’, ‘quality’, ‘independence’,
‘social capital’ and ‘community cohesion’. So far, it
has been applied (without definition) mainly to adults
with disabilities, as in the Green Paper Independence,
Well-Being and Choice (Department of Health, 2005).
In this article, I shall examine how it might be applied
to children and young people and the implications for
children’s services.
The new interest in well-being is linked to research
into ‘happiness’ – its nature, causes and correlates –
as an indication of quality of life. The concept is
derived from ‘hedonic psychology’, the new science
which studies self-evaluated overall satisfaction with
life and its various elements. Led by the Nobel
Laureate, Daniel Kahneman, psychologists have
focused on the measurement of happiness, how
moments of pleasurerelate to the overall assessment
of well-being, and which aspects of life contribute
most significantly to levels of satisfaction (Kahneman
et al,1999). There are obvious similarities here with
the World Health Organization’s definition of
children’s quality of life – ‘an individual’s perception
of their position in life, in the context of the culture
and values in which they liveand in relation to their
goals, expectations, standards and concerns’
(Skevington, 2005). International studies within this
paradigm (Jirojanakul, Skevington & Hudson, 2003)
and US research on an index of child well-being (Land
et al,2001; Meadows et al,2005) contribute to the
process of integrating child and adult investigations.
The findings which have been most seized upon by
commentators, and especially by economists, have
been the lack of correlation between increases in
income per head and subjective well-being (SWB) in
the affluent countries (Frey & Stutzer, 2002: 8–9), and
the greater salience of relationships than income for
well-being (Layard, 2003; 2005). Although most
people in rich countries arehappier than those in
most poor ones, and higher income citizens happier
that their poor counterparts, within those states
whereaverage incomes per capita areover $15,000 a
year, partnership, friendship and community
membership contribute more strongly to SWB than
the last one thirdof income, and trust in fellow
citizens contributes almost as much (Helliwell, 2003).
Well-being: the next revolution
in children’s services?
Bill Jordan1
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