Monitoring child well-being: a South African rights-based approach

Abstract

Practical and user-friendly, this volume provides an evidence 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 the status of children. 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.