Innocenti Research Centre Research Articles

Theatre Elicitation: developing a potentially child-friendly method with children aged 8–12

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the growing body of literature published in Children Geographies on the importance of involving children in research processes. Inspired by participatory creative methods such as photo elicitation and popular/forum theatre, we have developed a potentially child-friendly tool referred to as Theatre Elicitation (TE). The objective of TE is to use theatre forms as a means of data collection in the context of a negotiated research process. In a pilot project in which we explore TE, children shared their perceptions of happiness. This was inspired by a UNICEF Report [2007. Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries. Innocenti Report Card 7. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre] that listed ‘Dutch children’ as the happiest of the world. The focus of this article is the development of TE as an interactive research tool. Insights were gained into the meaning of ‘child-friendly’ research, shifting power relations between children, peers and adults, and how children’s own positioning in lived experiences contextualized concepts such as ‘Dutch children’.

CHILDREN IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES: LOOKING TO AMERICA’S FUTURE

Children in immigrant families account for nearly one-in-four children in the U.S. They are the fastest growing population of children, and they are leading the nation’s racial and ethnic transformation. As a consequence, baby-boomers will depend heavily for economic support during retirement on race-ethnic minorities, many of whom grew up in immigrant families. Because the current circumstances and future prospects of children in immigrant families are important not only to these children themselves, but to all Americans, this report uses data from Census 2000 to portray the lives of children with immigrant parents and highlights policy and program initiatives that will foster the future success of these children. This report begins by discussing the diverse origins and destinations of children in immigrant families. It then highlights substantial evidence that children in immigrant families have deep roots in the U.S. refl ected in their own citizenship, as well as their parents’ citizenship and length of residence in this country, their own and their parents’ English fl uency, and their family commitment to homeownership. Based on a new alternative to the offi cial poverty measure, the report continues by discussing economic challenges confronted by many immigrant families. It also portrays additional immigrant strengths and challenges associated with family composition, parental education and employment, and access for children of immigrants to early education and the later years of schooling. Looking toward fostering a successful future for these children, the report identifi es promising policy and programmatic initiatives for language and literacy training, and for assuring access to education, health, and other essential services, and it identifi es immigrant-related questions that should be asked in all research studies involving children and families.

Schools, Poverty, and the Achievement Gap

LAST June, representatives from more than 20 countries and several international agencies came together under the midnight sun in Trondheim, Norway, to discuss the challenge of creating greater in the outcomes of This meeting, sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Norwegian Ministry of Education, was the culmination of several years of work on the theme of equity in education. The OECD will shortly issue a report titled No More Failres, replete with analysis and recommendations on how to improve in educational outcomes. The concern for raising the bar and closing the in educational outcomes is now widespread around the world. Kappan readers will be familiar with the debate on the achievement gap, especially in the context of No Child Left Behind. In Europe, the results of (Programme for International Student Assessment--www.pisa.oecd.org) brought the issue into stark relief as well. PISA, a large, carefully designed study now involving more than 40 countries, tests 15-year-olds in reading, science, and mathematics. There have been two rounds of results so far, in 2000 and 2003, with a third due to be released this December. The findings of have been striking and consistent. Some countries that thought they were doing well educationally found that they had not only poor overall results but also very large gaps between their highest- and lowest-achieving students. In Germany, the phrase PISA Schock has come into the language as a sign of how serious the problem is. In contrast, some other countries, such as Finland, Korea, and--yes--Canada, showed very high overall results and much smaller gaps in their achievement distribution. The reality, in and in every other assessment of student outcomes, is that socioeconomic status remains the most powerful single influence on students' educational and other life outcomes. This is true in Finland and Canada as well as in the U.S. and everywhere else. Where you are born and grow up matters enormously to what you are able to be and do. A recent study in my home town of Winnipeg, using a database of all children born in the city in 1984, showed that, whereas 89% of all students writing the grade-12 language exam passed, only 12% of students whose families had received social assistance in the previous two years passed the exam.1 Indeed, a large proportion of this group was either a year or more behind or out of school entirely. Although the achievement gap in Canada is smaller than in the United States, it is far from trivial. UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre recently released a report with the fascinating title of Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries (www.unicef-irc.org/publications). Using a rich array of data, it compares the situation of children in Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and 18 other European countries on six dimensions, including material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's subjective sense of well-being. No country ranks high on all six dimensions. The Netherlands gets the best overall score. Canada's average ranking across the six areas is 12th, while the U.S. and the U.K. are at the bottom. And the kicker is that the report concludes: Variation in government policy appears to account for most of the variation in child poverty levels between OECD countries. No OECD country devoting 10% or more of GDP to social transfers has a child poverty rate higher than 10%. No country devoting less than 5% of GDP to social transfers has a child poverty rate of less than 15%. (2) About 15% of Canadian children live in poverty, defined as living in a household with income less than 50% of the national median. What makes the Canadian situation galling is that in 1989 the Parliament of Canada passed a unanimous motion to end child poverty in the country by the year 2000. …

Early Intervention Training in Ukraine: Building Capacity One Step at a Time

Early Intervention Training in Ukraine: Building Capacity One Step at a Time

The UNICEF Report on Child Well-Being

Arecent report from the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, entitled “An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries,” assessed the general welfare of children in the European and North American countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 1 The report, which recognizes that policy makers demand clarity, is an exercise in informed aggregation as the 40 examined indicators are summarized as 6 dimensions: Material Well-Being, Health and Safety, Educational Well-Being, Peer and Family Relationships, Behaviors and Risk, and Subjective Well-Being. A summary index was calculated for each dimension, and the average ranking across all the dimensions was then calculated for each country. The authors of the report have done a remarkable job analyzing and formatting the included indicators in a manner that permits valid cross-national comparisons. The United States and the United Kingdom had among the lowest summary rankings of child well-being of all the examined countries. Although the specific findings in the report should generate calls for better programs for children in these countries, the larger message of the report may lie in what was not explicitly stated but merely implied by the indices: that the relatively low ranking of child well-being reflects relatively high levels of social inequality. The strength of this relationship is suggested in the Figure, in which the report’s child well-being rankings are plotted against the most widely used indicator of inequality, the Gini coefficient, which summarizes the extent to which the distribution of incomes in a society departs from complete equality. 2 As is evident in the graph, the United States has by far the greatest inequality, with the UK coming close second, as well as the worst indicators of child well-being among the compared countries. The scale of social inequality in the United States translates directly into substantial levels of absolute poverty, particularly for children. When one adjusts for the purchasing capacity of different levels of income in each country, the poorest families in the United States fare worse than their counterparts in many of the other countries included in the UNICEF report. 3 Moreover, children are more heavily concentrated in the poorest segments of American society. Indeed, the material insecurity that a family with children currently feels is greater now than it has been since the Great Depression. 4 The number of children living in or near poverty in the United States is so large that virtually all indicators of child well-being that are sensitive to social status will prove to be relatively low in international comparisons. Beyond absolute levels of child poverty, the observed differences in social inequality are also associated with different political attitudes toward ameliorating poverty’s impact on children. A recent survey of attitudes toward income inequalities in OECD countries suggested that Americans are less aware of the actual scale of inequality at the top of their income distribution than was found in the other surveyed countries. 5 More important still was the finding that attitudes in the United States toward reducing income inequalities were more polarized than in the other countries. Americans had similar attitudes toward reducing inequalities between the highest income and middle income levels, but had less interest than in the other surveyed countries in reducing inequalities between the middle and lowest income levels. This is likely expressed in the relatively weak social programs in the United States dedicated to ameliorating the effect of poverty on child health and development. The United Kingdom provides an interesting contrast in view of its different European style political and welfare system. In the United Kingdom, under a Labour government, there has been a major shift in policy to reduce child poverty and improve educational attainment through major investment in deprived areas, an overarching set of targets (the Every Child Matters framework), and the appointments of an ombudsman for children and a children’s commissioner to oversee these policy developments. 6 One might have expected better progress with the United Kingdom’s well-developed and universal welfare system, which includes a health service that has received unprecedented levels of federal investment in recent years (although one must be cautious in approaching the data which are up to 7 years old). The indicators have all received the same weighting for simplicity, but whether this is a reasonable assumption may require more research. Nevertheless, for those looking at these data in the United Kingdom, there has been good progress in keeping children safe from injury, although the United Kingdom

The Child Friendly Cities Initiative

Over the last 15 years, numerous local, regional and national initiatives to make cities more child friendly have been launched worldwide. Experience has shown that the implementation of children's rights at local level goes hand in hand with improved living conditions for all age groups within society. This applies not only to developing countries but to industrialised nations as well. This paper describes the development and background of the Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI). In support of the initiative, the International Secretariat of the CFCI at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, produced documentation and tools that are being used worldwide by individuals, institutions and organisations committed to promoting children's rights and realising child friendly environments at local level. The paper outlines the key elements of a child friendly city, as determined by the Secretariat in consultation with a wide range of partners. This article also describes the efforts of the Swiss Committee for UNICEF in implementing the initiative in Switzerland. The main aspects of the Swiss programme are the self-assessment of communities with the help of a questionnaire, the implementation of workshops with children and young people, and the elaboration of a work plan.

Child well being in rich countries – Canada's ranking

To the Editor; The United Nations has published a report card for the top 21 countries in the ‘industrialized world’. This is the seventh report in a series from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Innocenti Research Centre . Canadian paediatricians and family physicians have a lot to consider after reading this report. First, some satisfaction will be found knowing that, overall, Canada ranks in the middle third with a numeric score of 11.8. This is considerably better than the scores for the United States and the United Kingdom, which have two of the worst scores; however, Canada’s score is still far lower than the top scoring countries – the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Spain and Switzerland. However, the aggregate scoring is not the most useful reflection of Canada’s performance. There are six dimensions recorded; on “Material Well Being”, Canada ranked six of 21 and on “Educational Well Being”, Canada ranked two of 21. A total of 40 measures made up the aggregate scores. However, “Family and Peer Relationships” ranked Canada at 18 of 21 nations. This dimension covers several measures that try to impact on the ‘quality of children’s relationships’. It uses measures of family structure (percentage of children from single parent families and percentage of children from step-families), family relationship (percentage of children who report eating a main meal with parents more than once a week and percentage of children who report that parents spend time ‘just talking to them’) and peer relationship (percentage of 11-, 13- and 15-year-old children who report finding their peers ‘kind and helpful’). These measures are assessed by questionnaires. Less than 50% of Canadian children (children older than 15 years of age), according to this report, have parents who spend time ‘just talking to them’ several times a week. Only 63% of young people, younger than 15 years of age, find their peers ‘kind and helpful’. For “Behaviours & Risk Taking”, Canada was ranked 17 of 21. On behaviours, such as smoking, being drunk more than twice, using cannabis by 15 years of age and having unprotected sex by 15 years of age, Canada performs poorly. Combined with these scores is the “Converse Health Behaviours” – such as the percentage of children who eat breakfast, fruit and are physically active – in which Canada is only ranked at 12 of 21. Four of seven days, Canadian children report physical activity for 1 h or more a week. Of the 13- and 15-year-old age group, 19% reported overweight violence; Canada reported 36% of 11-, 13- and 15-year-old children involved in bullying over the previous 12 months. Finally, in the dimension of “Subjective Well Being”, five measures place Canada at 16 of 21 countries. The percentage of young people rating their health as ‘fair or poor’ was 14%. Only 21% of children in Canada (11, 13 and 15 years of age) rated themselves as ‘liking school a lot’. However, it is true that Canadian children rated themselves above the ‘middle of the life’ satisfaction scale. The notions of preventive health in Canada must be re-examined for children in the light of this report. Complacency from overall material well-being (ignoring large worrying gaps) obscures some cold facts.

Britain is worst in Europe for teenage pregnancy rates

Britain has the second highest teenage birth rate in the developed world, according to a new report from the United Nations. The United States is the only country with a higher proportion of teenage mothers, with 52 per 1000 compared with 32/1000 in the United Kingdom. The lowest birth rates were found in Korea, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden, where less than 7 girls per 1000 gave birth. A league table of teenage births in rich nations , a report compiled by Unicef's Innocenti research centre in …

UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre: "Young People in Changing Societes"

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