Measuring well-being of young people with SEN

‘Well-being’ describes a person’s overall life satisfaction—including how an individual experiences their relationships with others, and their sense of self-worth. For many charities and youth organisations, understanding the well-being of the young people the work with is key to understanding their impact, but it is very difficult to measure. For this reason, NPC developed its Well-being Measure, to help these organisations do exactly that.

Until 2013, the existing NPC Well-being Measure had not been tested for use by young people with special educational needs (SEN). NPC was therefore commissioned to modify the Well-being Measure questionnaires to make them accessible to children and young people with SEN.

This report outlines the process NPC underwent to adapt its Well-being Measure for this purpose. It also presents a few of the final, adapted well-being questionnaires for others to use.

By sharing some of these measures, we hope that others will build on our work and share their experiences of using the questions with us.