Effective new way of measuring children’s happiness welcomed by charities
How happy would you say you are today? Four out of ten? Eight? It seems strange to put a number on a feeling, and it’s a problem facing many charities who work to improve children’s lives. That’s why charity consultancy and think tank New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) has developed a new questionnaire that finally allows charities to measure a child’s feelings and capture the full impact of their work.
The questionnaire, developed in partnership with The Children’s Society, helps to measure different aspects of well-being for 11 to 16 year olds, such as self-esteem, resilience and peer and family relationships.
Five children’s charities, including Barnardo’s, The Outward Bound Trust and The Place2Be, have piloted the scheme and are already getting useful and interesting results, as revealed in NPC’s new report Feelings Count.
The Outward Bound Trust, which provides outdoor experiences to help young people develop, found that its courses improved children’s self-esteem, resilience and emotional well-being. There were also significant differences between girls and boys. After taking part in the Outward Bound course, the girls in one school showed greater improvements than the boys in self-esteem, resilience and emotional well-being.
Emma Ferris from The Outward Bound Trust says, "It’s been incredibly useful to take part in the well-being research with NPC. Until now, it’s always been very hard for us to measure what effect we’ve had on young people, and we are very excited about the questionnaire and the results we’ve had already. We think it will make a real difference to how we measure and communicate the impact of our work to funders and schools and help us develop our courses with young people in the future."
The Place2Be, which provides counselling to children in schools, also found the questionnaire useful in assessing whether it was having an impact and offering the right services.
Wei Xu, Business Impact Analyst at The Place2Be:"‘I think it is good for us to use a questionnaire that measures subjective well-being in such a comprehensive and positive way. As the questionnaire is used by more and more charities, it will be really interesting to look at the well-being results achieved by different services for young people".
NPC will launch the questionnaire in October 2009 as part of a ‘well-being toolkit’ available for all charities and schools. "Charities can use the questionnaire to demonstrate their full impact, attract funding, improve their services and ultimately ensure the maximum benefit for the children they work with," says Camilla Nevill, NPC analyst and author of Feelings Count .
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