Overview

Improving Children’s Lives is an applied and inter-disciplinary research initiative that links together a number of research centres, clusters and institutes at Queen's University Belfast.

Established through the University's Research Forum for the Child, this initiative has been made possible by the generous support of The Atlantic Philanthropies, Queen's University Belfast and the HSC Research and Development Directorate of the Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland.

Through an ambitious programme of research, communication and advocacy activities, we seek to achieve lasting improvements in the health and wellbeing of children and young people. We aim to achieve this by: encouraging interdisciplinary working; enhancing research capacity; and building further on the extensive range of collaborative relationships we already have with other research centres and organisations responsible for providing children’s services both regionally and nationally/internationally.

Improving Children’s Lives is supported by a Secretariat and governed by a Management Committee that includes members from a wide range of disciplinary areas across the University including: social work; psychology; education; nursing and midwifery; medicine; public health; sociology; law; and pharmacy.

Our work is driven by a concern with improving outcomes for children and young people by generating and making use of the best available evidence. What makes our work particularly distinctive is our commitment to doing this from within a children’s rights-based framework.

If you would like to find out more about our work please do not hesitate to contact David Piekaar, ICL Administrator, in the first instance.