Monitoring Child Well-Being

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A South African rights-based approach This volume, practical and user-friendly, provides an evidence-based and rights-based approach to monitoring the well-being of children and adolescents in South Africa. Drawing on international precedents and extensive peer review processes, experts in various fields have developed this holistic set of indicators to enhance the monitoring of children's status. Taking ideological cues from the child-rights focus of the South African Constitution, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of Children, the authors evaluate the state of children, which is important to measure, within the contexts within which they grow and develop. The indicators, therefore, measure both the service environment and the children's developmental contexts. The book has two main parts. Part I provides the conceptual underpinnings that inform the development of the rights-based approach to monitoring child well-being over a range of domains, including:

• Child poverty and the quality of children's neighbourhoods and home environments
• Child health, HIV and AIDS, mental health and disability
• Early child development and education
• Child protection, children in statutory care, children in the justice system, children on the streets and children affected by the worst forms of labour.

Part II contains comprehensive tables of indicators for the domains covered in Part I, with recommended measurement and data sources. Where appropriate, the indicators are rights-based and aligned to current policy. Click here for convenient, quick-reference indicators suitable for consultation by policymakers, NGOs, and other stakeholders monitoring the situation of children in South Africa. The Core Indicator Sets are designed as quick reference documents for monitoring children's well-being. They explain the nature of indicators and provide a short guide to them. The Sets accompany the volume referred to above, which provides an in-depth treatment of the nature of indicators, a rationale for the choice of indicators in each area, an extended set of indicators, and selected child rights documents. We recommend that those requiring full information on monitoring child well-being consult the accompanying volume.

PART 1 RATIONALES FOR INDICATOR DEVELOPMENT

Section I Concepts and contexts
1. Monitoring the well-being of children: historical and conceptual foundations
Rachel Bray and Andrew Dawes
2. A rights-based approach to monitoring the well-being of children in South Africa
Rachel Bray and Andrew Dawes
3. Conceptualising, defining and measuring child poverty in South Africa: an argument for a multidimensional approach
Michael Noble, Gemma Wright and Lucy Cluver
4. Neighbourhood indicators: monitoring child rights and well-being at small-area level
Catherine Ward

Section II Child survival and health domain
5. Monitoring child health
Haroon Saloojee
6. Monitoring child and adolescent mental health, risk behaviour and substance use
Alan Flisher
7. Monitoring child unintentional and violence-related morbidity and mortality
Amelia van der Merwe and Andrew Dawes

Section III Education and development domain
8. Monitoring children’s rights to education
Linda Chisholm
9. Early childhood development and the home-care environment in the pre-school years Linda Biersteker and Jane Kvalsvig
10. Monitoring childhood disability
Margie Schneider and Gillian Saloojee
11. Monitoring specific difficulties of learning
David Donald

Section IV Child protection domain
12. Monitoring the well-being of street children from a rights perspective
Catherine Ward
13. Monitoring the worst forms of child labour, trafficking and child commercial sexual exploitation
Lucy Cluver, Rachel Bray and Andrew Dawes
14. Monitoring child abuse and neglect
Andrew Dawes and Mihloti Mushwana
15. Monitoring the situation of children in statutory care
Jackie Loffell
16. Monitoring children in conflict with the law
Lukas Muntingh
17. A monitoring dilemma: orphans and children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS
Andrew Dawes, Amelia van der Merwe and Ren Brandt

PART 2 THE INDICATORS

Neighbourhood indicators
Indicators for monitoring child health
Indicators for monitoring child and adolescent mental health
Indicators for monitoring child injury morbidity and mortality
Education indicators
Indicators for monitoring early childhood development
Indicators for monitoring childhood disability
Indicators for monitoring child-specific difficulties of learning
Indicators for monitoring street children
Indicators for monitoring child labour, trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation
Indicators for monitoring child abuse and neglect
Indicators for monitoring children in statutory care
Indicators for monitoring children in conflict with the law
Indicators for monitoring orphans and children made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS

Appendices
Appendix 1 Convention on the Rights of the Child
Appendix 2 Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996
Appendix 3 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
Appendix 4 Key terms associated with indicators and monitoring
Appendix 5 Characteristics of effective indicators for child rights and well-being
Appendix 6 Summary of South African data on child health indicators
Appendix 7 South African EMIS indicator domains
Appendix 8 Indicators for juvenile justice as developed by UNICEF
Appendix 9 UNICEF recommended indicators for orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS

Professor Andrew Dawes is an applied developmental psychologist who specialises in policy related research on children affected by abuse and violence. He is a former Research Director in the Child, Youth, Family & Social Development research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). He is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town, and an Associate Fellow of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford.

Dr Rachel Bray has been a part-time research fellow in the Centre for Social Science Research (CSSR) at the University of Cape Town.

Amelia van der Merwe is a Research Psychologist currently working as a research associate at the Child, Youth, Family & Social Development research programme of the HSRC.