Human Development and Capability Association Conference 2025, “Culture, Peace and Capabilities”, University of Bradford, UK, 1st-5th September 2025.
Developing frameworks and indicators for children’s capabilities: Reflections on participation and challenges using local, national and cross national data
Wednesday 3rd September 2025
Chair: Elaine Unterhalter, UCL
Presenters: Polly Vizard, LSE; Tania Burchardt, LSE; Elaine Unterhalter, Rosie Peppin Vaughan, Helen Longlands, UCL
This panel of three linked papers reflected on initiatives that have developed from the work done to develop the Equalities Measurement Framework, which operationalised the capability approach as a basis for inequalities monitoring in the UK (Burchardt and Vizard 2011). Two subsequent projects were presented and discussed:
i) the Children’s Information Project (CIP), a large research programme which aims to drive social change and deliver long-term impact by transforming the ethical use of children’s information, data and voice in children’s social policy and practice, especially for children most in need in the UK;
ii) the Accountability for Gender Equality in Education (AGEE) project which aims to support, through research and participatory discussion, approaches to address the documentation of gender issues in and through education, going beyond simple parity indicators, enhancing the ways in which gender equality in education is understood, evaluated, and articulated into social policy.
In this panel researchers from CIP (Tania Burchardt and Polly Vizard) and from AGEE (Elaine Unterhalter, Rosie Peppin Vaughan and Helen Longlands) reflected on the ways in which they have sought to introduce processes of participation, children’s voice and multidimensionality into frameworks that are useful for policy makers, planners, and advocacy groups. A conceptual paper from CIP discussed themes emerging from a literature review and engagement exercise. A second paper from CIP examined the critical stages in a framework ‘lifecycle’ where children’s voice plays a role. A paper from the AGEE project reported on working cross nationally, nationally and locally in four countries – Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa – to identify indicators for the AGEE Framework, and try to bridge some of the divisions between different settings for selecting and reflecting on data.
The panel, though bringing together three reflections on building frameworks and selecting indicators provided an opportunity to reflect on some of the challenges of identifying the needs of different sub groups of children under conditions of intersecting inequalities, working with data gaps, and navigating the existing landscapes of data and how it is used nationally and internationally. The aim of the panel was to draw out how cultures of participation, drawing from the capability approach, can be sustained and supported in a range of policy contexts, working across different scales (local, national and cross national) and how some of the conceptual insights from work on the capability approach have been operationalized in working on indicators for equalities for children in social policy contexts, themselves often subject to multiple stresses and constraints.
Paper 1 Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks: innovation challenges in the English children’s services context – Polly Vizard, LSE
The presentation set out new findings from our forthcoming research report ‘Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks, multidimensionality and voice’ by Sophie Kedzior, Polly Vizard and Tania Burchardt. The presentation is one of two (complementary) presentations at HDCA 2025 setting out our findings.
Background
Building on our earlier work on the Equalities Measurement Framework, which operationalised the capability approach as a basis for inequalities monitoring in the UK (Burchardt and Vizard 2011), and our specific applications of the EMF in the children’s context (Clery et at 2013), our new paper has been written as an output of the Children’s Information Project (CIP). The CIP is a large research programme which aims to drive social change and deliver long-term impact by transforming the ethical use of children’s information, data and voice in children’s social policy and practice, especially for children most in need. The programme is a collaboration between four local authorities (North Yorkshire Council, Hampshire County Council, and Oldham and Rochdale Borough Councils working with Greater Manchester Combined Authority);five universities including University of Oxford (Rees Centre), University of Sussex and London School of Economics (the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion – CASE); and Research in Practice (a research organisation focussing on evidence-informed policy and practice). For more information see: Children’s Information (childrensinformationproject.org.uk).
Details
The first of our two complementary presentations provided an overview of our findings from a desk review and stakeholder engagement exercise on innovation challenges in developing Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks in the English children’s services context. Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks are increasingly being developed by central, regional and local government, other statutory bodies such as regulatory bodies and inspectorates, international organisations, NGOs and within the scope of academic and research projects. Examples of key Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks include the Supporting Families Framework and the new Children’s National Social Care Outcomes Framework: both are currently being used by central government departments with local government children’s services providing extensive informational returns. However, Frameworks of this type face common innovation challenges relating to the operationalisation of a holistic, multidimensional understanding of children’s needs and outcomes; inclusion and equalities, building up evidence on the needs and outcomes of sub-groups; children’s participation and voice; data gaps and over centralisation. We highlight innovation exemplars, identify the barriers, challenges and enablers of innovation in this field, and reflect on the conceptual and empirical links with the capability approach.
Paper 2 – Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks: focus on voice and valued relationships – Tania Burchardt, LSE
The presentation set out new findings from our forthcoming research report ‘Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks, multidimensionality and voice’ by Sophie Kedzior, Polly Vizard and Tania Burchardt. The presentation is one of two (complementary) presentations at HDCA 2025 setting out our findings.
Background
Building on our earlier work on the Equalities Measurement Framework, which operationalised the capability approach as a basis for inequalities monitoring in the UK (Burchardt and Vizard 2011), and our specific applications of the EMF in the children’s context (Clery et at 2013), our new paper has been written as an output of the Children’s Information Project (CIP). The CIP is a large research programme which aims to drive social change and deliver long-term impact by transforming the ethical use of children’s information, data and voice in children’s social policy and practice, especially for children most in need. The programme is a collaboration between four local authorities (North Yorkshire Council, Hampshire County Council, and Oldham and Rochdale Borough Councils working with Greater Manchester Combined Authority);five universities including University of Oxford (Rees Centre), University of Sussex and London School of Economics (the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion – CASE); and Research in Practice (a research organisation focussing on evidence-informed policy and practice). For more information see: Children’s Information (childrensinformationproject.org.uk).
Details
The second of our two complementary presentations focuses in on our findings from a desk review and stakeholder engagement exercise on children’s voice and valued relationships. Building on the lessons of this research exercise, we identify three discrete key stages within the lifecycle of a Children’s Needs and Outcomes Framework (or Framework ‘journey’) where children’s voice can play a key role: voice in the process of Framework development, design and governance; voice in Framework operationalisation and implementation (including voice as an element of the data that is selected and collected to ‘populate’ Frameworks); and Voice in Framework uses and action – that is, the empowerment and influence of children as agents and the operational and strategic role of voice in influencing decision-making and policy and practice, and in bringing about social change. As an innovation case study, we explore how increased emphasis on children’s valued relationships has resulted from innovative voice-based mechanisms and indicators, resulting in tangible policy and practice changes within local children’s services in England. We reflect on the conceptual and empirical links with the capability approach and assess potential for further innovation.
Paper 3 Making connections for gender equality in and through education : Reflections on participatory processes in working with frameworks, indicators and data to build connections – Elaine Unterhalter, Rosie Peppin Vaughan and Helen Longlands
The presentation reported on findings from work with the AGEE (Accountability for Gender Equality in Education) Framework cross nationally with a number of international organisations, nationally and locally in four countries – Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa – to identify indicators for the AGEE Framework, and try to bridge some of the divisions between different settings for selecting and reflecting on indicators and data. The AGEE Framework (Unterhalter, Peppin Vaughan and Longlands, 2022) was developed, drawing from experiences of other initiatives associated with the work of the HDCA, particularly the work on gender equality indices undertaken by UNDP, the Equalities Measurement Framework, (Burchardt and Vizard 2011) its application for work with children (Clery et at 2013), the multidimensional poverty initiative (Alkire and Foster, 2011) and the work on Social Institutions and Gender Index (Branisa,Klasen, Ziegler, 2013). In this paper we reflect on participatory processes and challenges encountered in working with different communities of practice interested in drawing on the AGEE Framework – international organisations, national governments, women’s rights advocacy groups and local neighbourhood networks. We discuss some of the challenges in responding to settings of intersecting inequalities, how we have had to think about voice and silence, the question of who is included as agents of change , how indicators are selected and the meaning given to this process by differently positioned actors. In considering how frameworks, indicators and concern with data concerned with children, gender and education might connect and disconnect we report on some of the work conducted in AGEE workshops in 2024 and 2025 and how processes of participation and thinking about data have opened up spaces for reflections across difference.
References
Branisa, B., Klasen, S., & Ziegler, M. (2013). Gender inequality in social institutions and gendered development outcomes. World Development, 45, 252-268.
Burchardt, T., & Vizard, P. (2011). ‘Operationalizing’ the Capability Approach as a Basis for Equality and Human Rights Monitoring in Twenty‐first‐century Britain. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 12(1), 91–119.
Clery, E., T. Tsang and P. Vizard (2014). ‘The children’s measurement framework: a new indicator-based tool for monitoring children’s equality and human rights.’ Child Indicators Research 7: 321-349
Kedzior S, Vizard P and Burchardt T ‘Children’s Needs and Outcomes Frameworks: Innovation challenges, multidimensionality and voice’. Forthcoming (2025) CASE research report.
Unterhalter, E., Longlands, H., & Peppin Vaughan, R. (2022). Gender and intersecting inequalities in education: Reflections on a framework for measurement. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 23(4), 509-538.
Unterhalter, E. (2023). An answer to everything? Four framings of girls’ schooling and gender equality in education. Comparative Education, 59(2), 145-168.