Understanding the Subjective Well-Being of Younger Children Looked After in Wales: A Qualitative Study Designed with Children in Care Using Creative Methodologies

Well-being is a core element of Welsh Government policy for children’s social care. It involves understanding and placing the views of those receiving a service about what is important to them at the heart of our policies and practices.

Surprisingly, internationally there is little research on the views of younger children in care on their well-being, very little that uses in-depth qualitative research and none in Wales. This is a major gap for developing services: how can we know what children need if we do not find out from them? Recent research also suggests that social workers and others do not feel confident and skilled in exploring well-being with younger children and therefore tend not to do so. This study aims to address these gaps by focussing on what primary school aged children (years 5 and 6) who are in care think is important to them. It will adapt methods used in other research, including ground-breaking studies carried out by a group of international experts and recent studies on older children in Wales.

The study will engage 30-50 children in years 5 and 6 from 3 local authorities. Over 4 child-friendly fun sessions using creative methods, we will explore the people, places, activities and possessions which the children view as important to their well-being. They will be asked about the best and worst things about the areas they live in, as well as other issues they identify as important to their sense of well-being. Key elements of how we carry out the study, including areas to focus on, where and when sessions should happen and how we should share findings will be agreed with the children, though core elements of the study will remain consistent with international work using similar methods so that we can compare findings.

A key output from the study will be to share the materials for exploring well-being so that professionals and carers can use them in understanding what is important to the children whom they work with. Hence the project will generate a free online Well-Being Toolkit with guidance, along with more conventional webinars and summaries. It will produce academic articles on what the children say about what is most important to their well-being and how it compares to children not in care, as well as developing methodological insights into participatory research with young children.