Monitoring, protecting and promoting 'well-being' is a central goal of child-focussed development work. However, the conceptualisation and measurement of well-being is led by competing adult-centred research paradigms and its applications in policy are equally contested. This article outlines some of the major debates, drawing on literatures as diverse as philosophy and economics, as a starting point for reviewing three contrasting approaches to researching children's well-being: indicator based, participatory and longitudinal. There are promising signs of integration among these approaches suggesting well-being has potential as a bridging concept that highlights diversity, inequality and agency in children's lives.Controˆler, prote´ger et promouvoir le 'bien-eˆtre' des enfants sont des objectifs centraux des travaux de de´veloppement axe´s sur l'enfance. Pourtant, la conceptualisation et mesure du bien-eˆtre sont marque´es par des paradigmes de recherche antagonistes axe´s sur les adultes, et leurs applications en termes de politiques font e´galement l'objet de de´saccords. Cet article pre´sente un aperc¸u des principaux de´bats, et sur la base de travaux effectue´s dans des domaines aussi divers que la philosophie et l'e´conomie, passe en revue trois approches contraste´es de recherche sur le bien-eˆtre des enfants: Une approche base´e sur des indicateurs, une approche participative et la troisie`me, longitudinale. Il existe des signes prometteurs d'inte´gration entre ces diffe´rentes approches, ce qui laisse a`penser que le bien-eˆtre peut potentiellement servir de concept charnie`re soulignant l'importance de la diversite´, l'ine´galite´et la capacite´d'action dans la vie des enfants

Monitoring, protecting and promoting 'well-being' are central to realisation of children's rights. Yet definitions of the concept are both variable and can appear conceptually confused. Competing research paradigms engage with the concept and its measurement, while applications of well-being in policy are equally contested. This paper outlines some of the major debates, as a starting point for reviewing three contrasting approaches to well-being: indicator-based, participatory, and longitudinal research. In particular, it focuses on applications of the concept in contexts of child poverty worldwide. We suggest there are some promising signs of integration amongst these approaches, and argue that well-being does have potential as a bridging concept, at the same time highlighting inequalities, acknowledging diversity, and respecting children's agency. Drawing on the experience of Young Lives, a 15 year, four-country longitudinal study of child poverty, we suggest that methods for studying child well-being in global contexts should be dynamic and sensitive to culture and time, as well as to the trade-offs that children are required to make between themselves and others. We argue that dynamic approaches are especially important in research with children as they address how people change in time. Well-being is understood by Young Lives to be about real people and the social contexts they inhabit. It can act as a lens - similar to culture - which recognises that outcomes of deprivation are influenced by children and their responses to and interpretation of events. Accessing children's views in the context of their communities is important and can increase the accuracy and credibility of research data. Crucially, well-being research also foregrounds subjective meanings and experiences, and provides the background for interpreting 'best interests'. While shared visions for well-being can set parameters of acceptability and underpin basic entitlements, detailed specification must be negotiable, especially taking account of the views of the principal stakeholders, namely children, their caregivers and others centrally concerned with their lives.

Other chapters in this volume explore the contribution of governments, NGOs, community and faith-based organizations in provision of EC services for young childre n and families. This chapter is focused on the potential of the private sector, which is receiving increasing national and international attention as part of the search for alternative models for financing ECCE, (e.g. Naudeau et al., 2011, Section 4). One attractive possibility is establishing a global fund for ECCE, harnessing private philanthropies and corporate engagement into development initiatives, including education (Burnett and Bermingham, 2010). While acknowledging these initiatives, our focus in this chapter is on a more localized aspect of the financing debate, namely the role of the private sector as a service provider -especially the 'private-for-profit' sector. Specifically, the chapter asks how far growth in private ECCE services that are often little (or lightly) regulated is compatible with ensuring equity in access and quality of ECCE?Private-for-profit covers a very wide spectrum indeed, from single individuals running a small business, offering children a few hours care in their homes, through to large

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Its purpose is to strengthen open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) systems and structures to increase access to education for young people living in high HIV prevalence areas in Malawi and Lesotho. It seeks to achieve this through developing a new, more flexible model of education that uses ODFL to complement and enrich conventional schooling. It also seeks to encourage application of the new knowledge generated through effective communication to development agencies, governments, development professionals, non-governmental organisations and other interested stakeholders. Access to education and learning is being viewed as a 'social vaccine' for HIV but in high prevalence areas orphans and other vulnerable children are frequently unable to go to school regularly and are thus being deprived of the very thing they need to help protect themselves from infection. In this context sustained access is critical to long term improvements in risk and vulnerability and it requires new models of education to be developed and tested.