AUSTRALIAN CHILD WELLBEING PROJECT

The Australian Child Wellbeing Project (ACWP) is a new child-centred study in which children’s perspectives are being used to design, conduct and interpret findings from Australia’s first major nationally representative and internationally comparable survey of well-being among children aged 8-14 years.

Little is known about Australian children’s well-being in their middle years, or how well-being varies among different groups of children. This study employs innovative qualitative and quantitative research techniques to elicit children’s own perspectives. Particular attention is given to understanding the perspectives of children in six groups who are often seen as experiencing high levels of disadvantage and/or marginalisation: Indigenous children, culturally and linguistically diverse children, children with disabilities, children in regional and remote Australia, economically disadvantaged children and children in out-of-home care.

The ACWP survey will benchmark child well-being in Australia and provide information that contributes to the development of effective services for children’s healthy developmen in the futuret. It will also, for the first time, feed into a new international study that will establish where Australian children stand in comparison to children in other high income countries.

While ACWP, building from a ‘child perspectives’ approach, aims to measure wel-lbeing in broader areas than health, there is nonetheless good scope to develop synergies between HBSC and ACWP. This will facilitate comparison between Australia and other developed countries in important aspects of child well-being, where comparisons are currently lacking. International comparisons between HBSC and ACWP data may also lend support to drives among researchers and advocates for funding to roll out a ‘full’ HBSC in Australia in 2017-18.