The Children’s Society has developed a new tool which measures the well-being and quality of life of children.

Ever since publishing the Good Childhood Inquiry in 2009, the charity has been investigating the best ways of monitoring well-being. It wants to establish benchmarks against which the nation's childhood experiences can be measured over time.

The result of all this work is the new Good Childhood Index that has as its core principle – self-reporting, so as to ensure that the viewpoints of children and young people themselves are captured.

Gwyther Rees, Research Director at The Children's Society said: "There has been considerable concern about children's well-being, especially in relation to all the cuts currently being discussed. Investigating children's well-being is crucial as there is evidence that suggests negative well-being leads to other issues in people's lives such as poor mental health. It’s vital we monitor and ensure the issue of children’s well-being never falls down the political agenda.

"The Good Childhood Index is a real breakthrough and means that we won’t simply look at social indicators like income or educational attainment to assess well-being. We can now capture the voice of the child to get the full picture."

The long term aim is that professionals will be able to use the index so they can benchmark their school or any large group of children against the national average of well-being that this survey will provide.