Society's readiness: How relational approaches to well-being could support young children's educational achievement in high-poverty contexts

Street, Martina ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8678-7075 (2021) Society's readiness: How relational approaches to well-being could support young children's educational achievement in high-poverty contexts. Children and Society, 35 (5). pp. 736-751. ISSN 0951-0605

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Abstract

This paper explores how relational approaches to well-being could support young children's educational achievement in high-poverty contexts. It draws on findings from a qualitative study involving mothers and early years educators living and/or working in a city characterised as one of the most disadvantaged in England. The findings suggest that children's well-being, rather than being merely an individual characteristic or aspiration, is interdependent with their social and material environments, as are the institutions that support them. The paper concludes by calling for a recalibration of early childhood policies away from assessing individual children's ‘school readiness’ to encouraging society's readiness to support everyone's well-being, and consequently that of young children too.