Perspectives of Refugee Children Resettling in Australia on Indicators of Their Wellbeing

Jeanette A. Lawrence (), Ida Kaplan () and Amy H. Collard ()
Additional contact information
Jeanette A. Lawrence: The University of Melbourne
Ida Kaplan: Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture
Amy H. Collard: Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture

Child Indicators Research, 2019, vol. 12, issue 3, No 10, 943-962

Abstract: Abstract Indicators of the well-being of refugee children are under explored, especially from children’s perspectives. We used a child-friendly computer-assisted interview (CAI) to investigate patterns in refugee children’s positive and negative indicators of well-being as they resettled in Australia. Thirty-seven children aged 7 to 13 years were clients of a specialized refugee trauma service. Analyzes revealed 3 cluster subgroups with distinctive patterns of indicators of high, moderate, low levels of well-being indicators. One subgroup with a high level of well-being differed from low and moderate level subgroups in consistently expressing indicators of faring well with little worrying, and the absence of intrusive worries. A subgroup with a low level of well-being expressed indicators of not faring well, worrying about family members, and having worries that intruded in daily functions. A subgroup with a moderate level of well-being differed from the low cluster in having less severe and less intrusive worries. Subgroups expressed common positive indicators of what they needed to help them feel better, their reliance on family members for help, and the forms of close interactions and talk they received as help from family members. Implications include the value of enabling refugee children to express their perspectives, and the importance of including these perspectives as a basis for tailoring intervention strategies for children and their families and for including children’s perspectives in policy and service decisions and strategies.

Keywords: Refugee children; well-being; Children’s perspectives; Children’s worries; Computer-assisted interviews; Pattern analysis; Intervention strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-018-9568-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:12:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s12187-018-9568-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-018-9568-x

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().