Wellbeing of Wales, 2022: children and young people’s wellbeing - Foreword

The Well-being of Wales report provides an update on progress in Wales towards achieving the seven well-being goals. It considers the current position and progress in recent years with reference to the 50 national indicators for Wales and additional contextual information where appropriate. It was first published in 2017.

This report contains supplementary analysis of the data contained in the Well-being of Wales report that relates to children and young people. It has been produced to draw out the specific analysis relating to children and young people for users who are interested in understanding the well-being of this group, therefore not all indicators are referenced as they are in the main report.

We last published a report on children’s well-being in 2018. Since then, the Welsh Government has launched its Children and Young People’s Plan which sets out what the government will do for children and young people growing up, living and working in Wales. Progress against the plan will be monitored against a selection of the national indicators. In addition, a recent review by the Office for Statistics Regulation highlighted the need to improve the visibility of children and young people in statistics. We have also heard through feedback to consultations on the national indicators and milestones that the inclusion and visibility of data on children is important and should be improved. This report therefore aims to bring together a more coherent picture of what we know about the well-being of children and young people in Wales.

We will be considering future plans for further analysis on the well-being of Wales over the coming months. We don’t expect that the focus on children will be repeated annually, however we will consider if similar analysis should be carried out for other groups.

We want to ensure that our approach to reporting against well‑being goals is as effective as possible. We welcome feedback at any time on the content or usability of either this supplementary report or the main Well-being of Wales the report. If you have thoughts, please get in touch using the contact details in this report.

We also welcome suggestions for themes that could be used to for more supplementary reports in the future.

Stephanie Howarth
Chief Statistician