Staying Connected: The views of looked after children and young people on their contact arrangements: Research Report

The Bright Spots Programme began in 2013 to understand children and young people’s experience of care. The Programme uses four online surveys of well-being to capture the views of looked after children (age 4-7 years and 8-10 years), young people (11-18 years), and care leavers (18-25 years). The surveys were co-produced with 170 children, young people, and care leavers and the methodology to create and validate the children’s surveys has been reported elsewhere (Selwyn et al., 2017; Wood & Selwyn 2017; Zhang & Selwyn 2019). Conceptually, our surveys cover eudaemonic (e.g., positive about the future) and hedonic (e.g., happiness) aspects of well-being with subjective well-being defined as, feeling good and functioning well at an individual and interpersonal level.