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The purpose of this study was to explore 232 service providers’ and policymakers’ experiences of supporting children’s well-being during the pandemic, across sectors, in 22 countries – including Kenya, the Philippines, South Africa, India, Scotland, Sweden, Canada and the USA, in the last quarter of 2020.

A smartphone survey delivered via a custom-built app containing mostly open-ended questions was used. Respondents were recruited via professional networks, newsletters and social media. Qualitative content analysis was used.

The findings reveal numerous system-level challenges to supporting children’s well-being, particularly virus containment measures, resource deficiencies and inadequate governance and stakeholder coordination. Those challenges compounded preexisting inequalities and poorly affected the quality, effectiveness and reach of services. As a result, children’s rights to an adequate standard of living; protection from violence; education; play; and right to be heard were impinged upon. Concurrently, the findings illustrate a range of adaptive and innovative practices in humanitarian and subsistence support; child protection; capacity-building; advocacy; digitalisation; and psychosocial and educational support. Respondents identified several priority areas – increasing service capacity and equity; expanding technology use; mobilising cross-sectoral partnerships; involving children in decision-making; and ensuring more effective child protection mechanisms.

This study seeks to inform resilience-enabling policies and practices that foster equity, child and community empowerment and organisational resilience and innovation, particularly in anticipation of future crises.

Using a novel approach to gather in-the-moment insights remotely, this study offers a unique international and multi-sectoral perspective, particularly from low- and middle-income countries.

The number of children in England, and the number who may need additional support from services, is large and growing. At the latest count there are approximately three million children aged under five, 6.4 m aged 5‐14, and 3.1m young people aged 15‐19. Children and young people from ethnic minority backgrounds make up about a fifth of the total population under 20 ‐ much higher than for other age groups. In total there are reckoned to be 12m children, 400,000 children in need, 59,700 looked after children, 320,000 disabled children, 600,000 live births a year and approximately one million with mental health disorders (DoH, 2003a).No single agency or profession can cater for such a large and disparate number of individuals, but increasingly their needs are crossing traditional organisational and professional boundaries. The partnership imperative that has become so influential in services for adults is now set to re‐shape the domain of children's services. Accordingly, the aim of this article is to examine the genesis of this imperative, to explore the emergent policy responses and to gauge their likely effectiveness.

Substantial government investment has accelerated innovation activity in children’s social care in England over the past decade. Ethical concerns emerge when innovation seems to be propelled by a drive for efficiency and over-reliance on process output indicators, as well as, or even instead of, improving the lives of children, families and societies. No ethical framework exists at present to act as a check on such drivers. This paper reviews the literature with the aim of considering how best to address this gap.

This paper draws on a review of innovation in children’s social care, conducted as part of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project exploring innovation in services for young people exposed to extra-familial risk and harm.

This study proposes a new conception of “trustworthy innovation” for the sector that holds innovation in children’s social care to the standards and principles of the code of ethics for social work. This study offers an ethical framework, informed by the interdisciplinary school of organisational ethics, to operationalise this extended definition; the analytic framework guides policymakers and the practice sector to question at every stage of the innovation process whether a particular model is ethically appropriate, as well as practically feasible within a specific context. Implications for local decision-making and national policy are set out, alongside questions raised for future research.

This paper is the first to offer an ethical framework for innovation in children's social care. The conception of “trustworthy innovation” offers a guide to policymakers and the practice sector, which they can use to ethically test every stage of the innovation process and make decisions about whether a particular model is ethically appropriate, as well as practically feasible within a specific context.

This paper explores some of the issues surrounding the development of Internet services in public library children's services. It notes that IT services have generally been undeveloped in children's libraries and that this trend must not continue with networked computer services. It recognises that the lack of net‐worked computer service provision in children's libraries may lead to them seeming ‘irrelevant’ and ‘old fashioned’ to their users. The paper focuses on literature and literacy issues in relation to information and communication technology (ICT). It notes that few libraries have been using ICT to support their literature‐based services. One possible service model for the integration of ICT into literature services, UKOLN's Treasure Island Web site, is described and the results of an evaluation of it interpreted. The paper concludes looking forward to the Stories From the Web project which will develop the Treasure Island model further.

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.

Provides a general description of the movement for library services for children and children’s libraries, together with the modern public library movement in post‐war Japan. The Bunko as a home library, or a community‐based small library, is quite characteristic of Japan. The Bunko movement played an important role in improving the reading environment of children and the library service for children. The Chusho‐report (1963) and Shimin‐no‐Toshokan (1970) changed the concept of the public library in Japan. They contributed to an increase in reading facilities for children and the establishment of new public libraries. Children’s libraries at the national, public and private level are also described.

This article outlines the experience of the first 260 Sure Start Local Programmes of developing interagency partnerships in their areas. It draws on quantitative and qualitative data collected between 2000‐2005 by the implementation module of the government‐commissioned National Evaluation of Sure Start. Following a résumé of the aims and design of the Sure Start Local Programme initiative, a description of the implementation module methodology and an overview of existing knowledge around inter‐agency collaboration, five factors are identified which impacted on the partnership‐building task. These comprise: the nature of partnership history; clarity of purpose; the extent of strategic commitment at the highest levels; trust among partners; and the characteristics of the national workforce. The article concludes by highlighting the continuing relevance of these issues to the new collaborations required by the UK government's Every Child Matters agenda, including the work of children's centres.

This survey research aims to investigate the level of satisfaction among children (up to 14 years) with regard to facilities and services available at the children’s section of the Jaffna Public Library (JPL, Sri Lanka).

A structured questionnaire was distributed among randomly selected members of the children’s section, JPL. Data collected via the structured questionnaire were analysed using SPSS 22.0. In addition to the descriptive analysis, independent samples t-test and f-test were conducted to observe the influence of personal variables on different facets of user satisfaction.

The response rate was 67 per cent. Descriptive analysis showed that the prime purpose of visiting the children’s section (JPL) is reading books and other materials. With regard to frequency of visit, 86 per cent of the respondents visit the library three to four times in a week or at least once a week. Results of the f-test indicated that there is no significant difference among different age groups for overall satisfaction of children’s section facilities and services. Results of the t-test revealed that female children are more satisfied with the library environment compared to males. Further, the level of satisfaction with shelf arrangement, library environment and children’s programmes differed significantly between children studying in the bilingual and the Tamil mediums.

This study reports the empirical findings of the user survey carried out at the children’s section of the JPL.

Early years policy and services have been subjected to substantial and rapid reform over the past 20 years. This article provides a brief overview of legislative and policy changes over this period, with a particular focus on regulation and workforce issues, and traces the enduring influence of the Children Act 1989 to the present. It identifies a paradigm shift in early years services from a world view based on public health and care and on devolution of responsibility, to one in which promoting children's learning and development is core and centralised regulation and national standards are seen as essential. This is reflected in changed responsibilities at government department and regulatory body level. Despite these major changes, the article concludes that the key principles of the Act ‐ in terms of children's rights, parents' responsibilities, listening to children and inter‐agency co‐operation ‐ are still apparent.

In the context of current developments in children ' s services in the UK and increased emphasis on workforce development, the authors describe a survey of successful completers of a Post-qualifying (PQ) Child Care Award Programme, one of 18 such programmes in England that ran between 2001 and 2006/7. The survey ' s aims were twofold: first, to gather the respondents ' overall evaluations of their PQ training and information about their past and current work circumstances; and second, to explore their knowledge and opinions on the latest developments in children ' s services in relation to their own work practices. The findings from the survey are outlined under four themes, which are then discussed in relation to other relevant studies, reviews on the role and tasks of social workers and current developments associated with the Every Child Matters agenda and the integrated workforce. Concerns are raised about whether social work professionalism is being effectively utilised within the current children ' s services arrangements.