GIRFEC

Getting it Right for Every Child

The Scottish Government introduced ‘Getting it right for every child’ as the vehicle for achieving their social policy framework.

Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) is a National approach, used throughout Scotland, to help ensure children, young people and their families get support to develop their wellbeing.

Wellbeing is considered within eight indicators and here in North Lanarkshire we believe our children and young people have a right to be; Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible and Included (SHANARRI) both at home and also in their nursery or school.

Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) helps ensure the right support is offered at the right time by the right people and along the learning journey some children or young people (or their families) may need a bit of extra support.

For most children and young people the support they get from their families, local community and school enables them to grow up and become a responsible citizen, effective contributor, successful learner, confident individual and hopefully happy and healthy.

GIRFEC helps ensure that we all work together to get things right.  It’s important that adults know about GIRFEC but it’s also really important young people know as well.

The Getting it right for every child toolkit is designed to support professionals in Lanarkshire with a responsibility for implementing any aspect of the programme. The toolkit may also be of interest to other areas in Scotland. It includes a combination of written reports, exemplars, graphic images, animations, assessment paperwork and digital resources which are the result of a three year development programme.

The resource is broken down into:

  • General Resources
  • Culture Change Resources
  • Systems Change Resources
  • Practice Change Resources

This resource is available electronically through the Getting it right for every child in Lanarkshire website.

Gathering Views

Children and young people have a right to be consulted about their wellbeing. GIRFEC in Lanarkshire has developed the What I Think Tool to be used by staff as a framework for discussion with children and young people when gathering their views on support assessment and planning.

Named Person Service

An important part of the GIRFEC approach and the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 is the Named Person Service and the role of the Named Person.  When a child is born (and even before) there is someone from the Health Service to help make sure everything is going well for them, to help Get It Right. They are called the ‘Named Person’ and every child and young person has one.

Once a child starts school, the Named Person will be someone from education and will be either the Depute Head or Head Teacher of the school they go to.  When a young person moves to secondary school it will be a teacher from the pupil support team.  Your school will let young people and their family know who the Named Person is.

The Named Person has a shared responsibility to help promote, safeguard and develop a child/young person’s wellbeing and will work closely to make sure a child or young person’s views (and their family’s views) are listened to and fully involved in any discussions, decision making or planning that may affect them.

If you require any further information please refer to Scottish Government – GIRFEC website or download the new GIRFEC APP ‘free’ to download form the Apple Store or Google Play.