Report reveals family is vital for children's happiness

12 January 12

Hope and Homes for Children is today welcoming a report which confirms that family is the single most important component of a child’s wellbeing.

UK charity The Children’s Society has today released the Good Childhood Report 2012 which brings together the results of over 30,000 interviews with children aged eight to 16 in the UK. The report used The Good Childhood Index, which covers the main aspects of children’s lives, identified by children themselves, to form a comprehensive view of the factors which affect children’s happiness.

The results reveal that the way children feel about their family relationships is strongly linked to their overall wellbeing and family was found to be the most important of the 11 factors taken into account. The quality of the relationships between children and family members were found to be ten times more important than the particular structure of the family they live in.

In contrast, the small number of children interviewed who were not living in family environments children were around five times as likely to have low wellbeing as those living with family.

Read the report here.

Find out more about our work to ensure that children grow up in families.