Assessing children's quality of life in health and social services: meeting challenges and adding value

Abstract

The measurement of children's quality of life has an important role to play in improving their experience of health and social services, and in promoting a child‐centred approach to service provision. This article provides a rationale for both the development of robust quality of life measures specifically for children and also the use of these measures in assessing the effectiveness of treatments and policy changes. It highlights recent advances in the development of quality of life measures and provides examples of two instruments that have incorporated these steps to produce reliable and valid measures that are not only comprehensible to children of different age groups, but also meaningful to parents and health professionals. The challenge of matching statistically significant change in quality of life to changes of perceived importance to the individual is also discussed in the light of the advantages to be gained from the increased uptake within health and social care of quality of life measures for children.

Citation

Skevington, S. and Gillison, F. (2006), "Assessing children's quality of life in health and social services: meeting challenges and adding value", Journal of Children's Services, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 41-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200600013