ABSTRACT
Children have very strong ideas about what they want and need and there is evidence that they are able to accurately identify the quality of services offered to them. This chapter describes a step towards child-focused research project. The research method formed part of a needs assessment project relating to services for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, which also included a questionnaire survey and interviews with health, social services and education professionals. The research was commissioned by a health authority in a deprived area of northern England with a high resident population of young people of South Asian heritage. The aims of the research were to elicit the views of vulnerable young people about the nature of the problems facing them, discover the way they dealt with those problems, find out what were the sources of support which they could call upon and ascertain their feelings about the health and welfare services.
