Canada ranked 30th among 38 of the world’s richest countries in overall child and youth well-being, according to UNICEF’s 2020 Report Card. Our standing is particularly low and failing to progress in aspects of young lives including health, violence, material security and overall happiness (life satisfaction), even as national wealth continues to rise. In fact, children are more likely than adults to report unhappiness – at a time of life that we hope is more carefree. And while many well-being challenges are shared by a large proportion of the child and youth population, there are persistently wide gaps between youth at the top and bottom ends of the well-being spectrum. The COVID-19 pandemic placed further challenges in front of more children and widened the well-being gaps between them in some aspects of life– potentially for years to come.

Moving beyond the pattern that national data averages reveal, there are inequalities between children within communities across Canada, and variations between communities in different aspects of child and youth well-being. These gaps have profound implications for childhood today and for our future as a prosperous, inclusive and sustainable society, because child well-being today is the sentinel of future well-being. 

Increasingly, motivated communities are using or developing community-based approaches to gather and analyze data about the well-being of their residents. Ideally, that data should include information specific to young people, who constitute a large segment of the community population – typically between 20 and 50 per cent. Not only is their well-being inherently important, but they are also the best investment to dedicate scarce resources that will have long-term, lifelong benefits. Understanding where communities are making progress, falling behind and have equity gaps helps identify opportunities to improve the well-being of every young person and create a better community for everyone.

However, measuring child and youth well-being requires a unique approach. Young people have distinct needs and experience life differently. Since traditional survey methods are not as effective at reaching them, many communities lack the information they need to optimally support their youngest residents. In particular, smaller communities experience challenges in securing existing data from national or regional surveys, which may not disaggregate data at the local level or to the youth population, and they often need to piece together multiple surveys to produce a comprehensive picture of young lives across many dimensions. Furthermore, it is uncommon to find a comprehensive survey tool and process that young people everywhere in the community can positively engage in. The Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey is a tool that answers this call. It is for communities, by communities. It is for young people, with young people.

UNICEF Canada collaborated with communities, governments at all levels, researchers, organizations and young people across Canada and internationally to identify key indicators and data sources to measure and monitor the critical aspects of children’s lives that can be supported by effective investments, policies, programs and other actions. The Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being, released in 2019, provides a model dashboard to monitor the state of children and youth at national and provincial/territorial levels. The Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey provides community-specific data for a subset of the indicators included in the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being – those that can be measured by asking young people about their experiences and perspectives. It also enables a community, if it chooses, to compare its data to data reported by other communities that used the survey, and to the national and regional data presented in the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being. This enables a community to identify its unique strengths and challenges and creates opportunities to learn from and with other communities. Communities can also pair their survey data with localized administrative data (if available) to fully populate a data dashboard aligned with the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being and thereby produce a comprehensive, multi-dimensional view of the state of their children and youth. 

See Appendix: Mapping Survey Data to the Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-being.

The Community Child and Youth Well-being Survey was developed for communities across Canada through a partnership of UNICEF Canada, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Children and Youth Planning Table of Waterloo Region. It was further shaped through a demonstration project in the City of Ottawa, Halton Region, Waterloo Region and Nova Scotia tri-counties, with additional support from the Medavie Health Foundation. Throughout this process, diverse young people from across Canada have played central roles in the survey’s design, implementation, sense-making and action phases.