OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, no. 16, July 2023

Good policy making for child well-being calls for government ministries and agencies to better collaborate and focus on a small number of key child well-being issues. This paper takes stock of OECD countries’ recent initiatives to strengthen the integration of child well-being policies and lays out the challenges countries face as they work to push the child well-being policy agenda forward. It documents the use of
integrated policy plans for child well-being and child-specific policy implementation tools across the OECD, based on the information collected in the 2022 OECD Child Well-being Policy Questionnaire.

The analysis finds that integrated policy plans for child well-being are a widespread tool for policy integration and countries generally view them as making a positive contribution to coordinating the child well-being agenda. Integrated plans can provide the needed strategic direction for child well-being, improve policy coherence, and increase the visibility of child well-being issues. Yet, countries face significant implementation challenges that prevent these integrated plans from playing a substantial role in steering the child well-being policy agenda. To improve their effectiveness, countries could use these integrated plans to generate traction on specific cross-cutting issues and to funnel attention to a “small number” of key issues. Being clear and explicit about priority groups is necessary, on top of thinking concretely about
service integration. The analysis also shows that countries don’t have a long history of routine use of child-specific policy tools, but there’s an expressed desire to increase their use and to build the relevant competencies. Countries should look to learn from each other’s experiences and recent initiatives. As this paper illustrates, pursuing efforts to strengthen the integration of child well-being policies is costly. Therefore, it is important for countries to proactively consider the challenges that are highlighted and to look at options to effectively overcome or avoid the common pitfalls to maximise the benefits for children. (Abstract). Record #8334