Eurochild invites for annual conference on monitoring child well-being

Print This Post EMail This Post August 22nd, 2009

Ulrike Wisser, Brussels (EU, Belgium)

In its 6th annual conference between the 11th and 13th of November in Limasol, Cyprus, Eurochild, the European network on child and youth welfare focuses on the issue of monitoring child well-being with special attention to more quality in policy and practice.

Together with Pan-cyprian, the Coordinating Committee for the Protection and Welfare of Children of Cyprus, Eurochild wants to bring together policy makers,practitioners, researchers, as well as children and young people themselves from across the European Union.
The conference addresses ongoing European debates. Measurement and indicators are at the heart of a debate about improving performance in policy and practice.
Child well-being is notoriously difficult to measure, but there are more and more examples of where it is being done with good effect on policy development. This conference is framed within the European Union’s Social Inclusion agenda which has identified the eradication of child poverty by breaking the cycle of intergenerational inheritance as one of its key objectives. To help achieve this goal, the EU monitors income poverty and material deprivation and there are plans to develop common indicators that better reflect child well-being. The Eurochild conference should contribute into that debate.
Different workshops provide the platform to discuss the indicator issue, in public policy, for advocacy, at listening to children and for improving services in local government. Furthermore the conference wants to strengthen the exchange on how indicators in practice help improving services to children and families in fields like early years education and care, parenting and family support, children’s participation and children in care.
More details on the annual conference are available on the Eurochild website.

Ulrike Wisser works as policy adviser in the field of EU youth, education and social politics at BBJ Servis gGmbH, Brussels office.

Picture : www.pixelio.de (Photographer: Stephanie Hofschlaeger)  

Topics: child and youth welfare, EU, europe, poverty, youth