The UNICEF Canada Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey is your community’s opportunity to hear directly from young people about how they are doing. By embarking on the survey, you are investing in a future where the voices of young people are heard and their well-being stands at the centre of the most important decisions your community will make about: 

1. How priorities are set
2. How resources are allocated
3. How you work together, for and with young people, to make real change possible

Too often, decisions about children and youth are made without understanding their lives and without their involvement. The CommunityChild and Youth Well-being Survey is meant to inspire and support communities to gather and use comprehensive, actionable data about how children and youth are experiencing life – to identify actions that will advance their well-being and invest in what matters most. The survey asks young people ages 9 to 18 about their perspectives and experiences, like how they are feeling, if they have what they need to participate in opportunities, if they have enough free time, and how they feel about school and their community.  

The information we gather signals what we care most about as a community and is the currency we use to improve what we have. We know that surveys and statistics are not the only sources of information to understand young lives, but population data gets attention and drives action. 

In addition, the survey process itself can help build new relationships and opportunities for collaboration among diverse partners, including children and youth. This survey is distinct from others because it is delivered by the community for the community and because it deliberately invites youth to participate throughout the process, helping ensure the experience (and not just the outcome) is positive for them. 

A culture of shared priorities and participation can lead to new ways of thinking and sustained momentum to advance child and youth well-being in your community.

The Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey offers a long list of benefits and potential impacts:

• Signals that the well-being of children and youth is a community priority
• Tells young people that we value their views and well-being
• Ensures access to timely evidence specific to your community
• Overcomes the cost and complexity of gathering data about children and youth from multiple existing sources, if such data are available at the local level 
• Provides insights about child and youth well-being from their perspectives across broad dimensions of life, which can complement administrative data and other information
• Increases the visibility and voice of young people
• Makes visible inequalities and inequities between young people and between generations
• Creates a basis for conversations with and about young people
• Helps inform local decision-making (e.g., setting strategic priorities, designing programs and services) based on comprehensive evidence, including current perspectives and experiences of young people
• Establishes a baseline to monitor areas of life in which progress is advancing and equity gaps are closing, and identify persistent and emerging challenges on which to focus understanding and action
• Encourages collaborative, multi-sectoral, intergenerational understanding and action
• Opens the door to new partnerships and new data users
• Helps connect communities to each other for learning and support
• Supports implementation of holistic, interconnected approaches to address
  community issues
• Supports advocacy to other levels of government to address shared challenges
  and solutions
• Provides an evidence base to help secure or sustain funding and resources
• Provides a framework to measure the outcomes and ultimate impacts of investments, policies, programs, services and other initiatives
• Enables learning from successes and challenges in other communities

“Well-being indicators at the childhood level are better than exam scores at predicting future outcomes”

– UK What Works for Well-being Centre

Why do young people want to participate? Their main motivation is to make life better for other young people by catalyzing community change. They also say that completing the survey has these positive impacts:

• Provides a rare opportunity to be heard
• Offers a means to inform adults about often-hidden “real life” experiences, such as bullying and homelessness
• Allows sharing of experiences that could lead to change that helps peers
• Provokes positive self-reflection 
• Creates a positive experience to open up and feel like someone cares – demonstrates that adults are interested and listening
• Can be an enjoyable experience for those who like surveys