The ‘care’ of children in need in contemporary Scotland: the role of positivism and performance indicators in official imaginings of childhood and wellbeing

Improving the wellbeing of children is an ambition of governments worldwide. This
has led to increased activity to measure the implementation of policies intended to
achieve this. In this paper, we argue that this is currently limited through the reliance on statistically-driven methods and that there needs to be a fundamental change in how policies are assessed. We examine this within the current policy context for vulnerable children in Scotland.