Getting It Right For Every Child by NATASHA WATT (2308346)

What is GIRFEC?

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-13 15:11:47 UTC

GIRFEC stands for Getting it Right for Every Child, and it is Scotland's national approach to improving the well-being of children and young people. It is a way of working that puts the child at the center and ensures services like schools, health, and social work collaborate to provide the right help at the right time.

The Framework

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-13 15:15:23 UTC

The framework is based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and uses eight wellbeing indicators to measure progress, summarised by the acronym

SHANARRI: Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, and Included.

Key Principles

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-13 15:16:55 UTC

Child-centered: Focuses on the individual child's needs and rights.
Collaborative: Aims for all services working with children to work together consistently.
Early intervention: Stresses the importance of providing support early to prevent problems from escalating.
Well-being indicators: Uses the SHANARRI indicators (Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, and Included) to measure well-being.
Partnership: Works in partnership with children, young people, and their families to make decisions.

National Practice Model

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-13 15:20:47 UTC

The National Practice Model provides a shared framework for professionals to consistently identify, assess, and analyse the wellbeing needs of a child or young person.

It helps practitioners understand a child's growth and development by considering their rights, unique family circumstances, and the wider world, while exploring their strengths, resilience, adversities, and vulnerabilities.

The model integrates established tools, including the My World Triangle, Resilience Matrix, the eight SHANARRI wellbeing indicators, and the four contexts for learning from Curriculum for Excellence, to structure the use of assessment information gathered with the full participation of the child, young person, and their family.

My World My Triangle

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-13 15:21:49 UTC

The My World Triangle is a fundamental assessment tool within the National Practice Model mentioned earlier.

It is a simple visual framework designed to help practitioners, children, young people, and their families understand and assess a child's needs by focusing on three key areas of their life:

The Child/Young Person: Their health, development, and wellbeing.
What the Child Needs: The care, support, and guidance required from others.
The Wider World: The family, community, and social factors that affect the child.

By looking at these three areas together, the triangle helps to create a comprehensive picture of the child's world and identify where support might be needed.

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-14 06:50:56 UTC

GIRFEC is the philosophy/policy, and the National Practice Model is the toolset/how-to that helps professionals implement that philosophy.

🌟 Key Facts About GIRFEC 🌟

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-14 06:56:18 UTC

National Approach: GIRFEC is the Scottish Government's framework for all services and agencies (including health, education, social work, and police) to work together to improve outcomes and support the wellbeing of every child and young person (up to age 18) in Scotland.
Child-Centred: The core principle is to place the child, young person, and their family at the centre of all decisions, ensuring they are actively involved and that their views are respected.
Core Measurement: Wellbeing is assessed using the eight indicators known as SHANARRI (Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Respected, Responsible, and Included).
Early Intervention: It promotes a proactive and preventative approach, aiming to identify needs and provide support as early as possible to prevent small issues from escalating into major problems later on.
Rights-Based: GIRFEC is fundamentally based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which underpins the rights of children to be supported, protected, and have their voices heard.
Legislative Basis: Key elements of the GIRFEC approach were incorporated in Scottish law by the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014.

GIRFEC Principles and Values

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-14 07:00:38 UTC

GIRFEC, as a strengths-based approach, seeks to realise children’s rights on a day to day basis and is therefore underpinned by key values and principles.

Rights for Children, Young People & Families

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-14 07:03:55 UTC

4 Principles of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
Rights should be applied without discrimination (Article 2)
Best interests of the child to be a primary consideration (Article 3)
Right to life, survival and development (Article 6)
Right to to express a view and have that view taken into account (Article 12)

THE AIM...

nwatt7_1 — 2025-11-14 15:42:41 UTC

The aim is simple: to ensure every child gets the right help, at the right time, from the right people, so they can grow up loved, safe, and respected and reach their full potential.