THE SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING OF CHILDREN INTERNATIONALLY AND IN FINLAND

The concept of child well-being has been studied in a variety of disciplines. However, the well-being of children is often based on the experience of parents, professional assessments or health surveys. The voice of children and the subjective experience of their well-being is often missing; we need more children's subjective well-being research and indicators.

Services for children and families are being reformed in Finnish Government's key project, Programme to Address Child and Family Services. Laurea University of Applied Sciences studies the experimental well-being data of small children in the project and develops the subjective welfare indicator for children. In this article, writers try to consider why children's subjective well-being information is needed and what we should know about the subjective well-being of children. It is important to find out how the current global and Finnish children's well-being indicators differ and what the possible deficiencies in them are.