Child Well-Being Symposium

The child well-being symposium is one in a series of steps to advance the Brown School’s agenda related to positioning ourselves as a nationally recognized leader in the advancement of an assets based approach to child well-being. We seek to further shift the paradigm of child welfare as solely the protection of children to instead focusing on the promotion of healthy child development and well-being. While currently efforts to better understand well-being are underway multiple venues around the world, these efforts have yet to strongly influence policy and practice, and we see this symposium as a means to bring together these conversations to ultimately shape policy and practice. In essence, we seek to advance efforts to effectively use child welfare and child health research to inform practice and policy in the areas of child mental health, child welfare and child and youth development. The symposium is envisioned as an opportunity for the academic, policy and practice communities to engage around a common definition of child well-being, how to measure it and how best to use research to shape policy and practice, as well as how practice can shape scholarship. 

This work will result in a book, edited volume, virtual journal or series of papers advancing this agenda.