It’s been said that a child can ask a thousand questions that a wise person can never answer. Yet how often do we ever look to children for the answers? Why do we admire children for their curiosity but overlook their knowledge and experience?
What answers do young people have to address challenges to their health, safety and overall well-being? Canada ranks 25th out of 41 rich countries when it comes to child well-being, based on data from major surveys. Levels of bullying, suicide and child homicide are alarmingly high (and decidedly un-Canadian). Share that fact with your colleagues and they may be shocked. Share it with your kids, however, and they may expect it. Chances are, they will also have a lot to say about it.
We often speak with youth about their well-being, to help understand what the available data says and how it can inform better policies, services and other decisions. Recently, we held workshops with young people across Canada to see what else they think we should be measuring to take full account of their well-being. Did their own experiences line up with the data? Were we capturing everything that mattered to them? As it turns out, they did, but we weren’t.
We stopped in six different communities from coast to coast to coast. We talked to youth in urban settings of different sizes, in an isolated northern community, in a closed custody youth facility and in First Nations communities. They had one message in common: their well-being is a much broader concept than many adults recognize, and they are struggling to balance many interconnected aspects. Some young people self-identified as “falling through the cracks” even though they were perceived to be doing well in one area of their lives, such as school. Some even described living in dangerous situations in order to stay functional in other aspects of their well-being.
Don’t pinpoint our well-being only on “objective” measures like school grades or obesity, they said. Look at our mental and emotional health. Look at the quality of our relationships and our sense of belonging. Look at how we engage in society. Look at how much we have freedom and access to safe spaces and nature. You’re worried about our mental health? It’s about our relationships. Even our pets can support our mental health. Time and again, we heard from young people that pets make them happy and relieve stress.
In each place, young people identified aspects of their well-being that existing data largely overlooks. It’s only in starting to better understand what’s important to young people that we can help them create the conditions for their well-being.
With this new insight, published in the report My Cat Makes Me Happy, at UNICEF Canada we’re beginning to build a Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being. But it’s going to take more than data to make a dent in our goal to make Canada the best place to grow up in by 2030.
It’s going to take partnering with children and young people, communities and experts to develop and test innovative solutions to the challenges they identify — and we measure. And it’s going to take all of us to make sure children and youth count — and their voices are heard.
Because they don’t just have questions — they have the answers too.
Alli Truesdell is youth participation lead at UNICEF Canada.