GIRFEC Explained: What It Means for Parents in Scotland

Your child comes home from school with a folder, and somewhere in it is a form that mentions “wellbeing”, a “named person”, and eight words beginning with the letters S-H-A-N-A-R-R-I. Or a teacher says they’d like to start a “Child’s Plan”. If you have never heard of GIRFEC, none of this explains itself.

GIRFEC — Getting It Right For Every Child — is the framework sitting underneath all of it. It shapes how Scottish schools, health visitors, GPs and social workers think and talk about your child. This guide explains what it actually is, what the jargon means, and — crucially — what it does and does not give you as a legal right, because that last part is widely misunderstood.

What GIRFEC actually is

GIRFEC is the Scottish Government’s national approach to children’s wellbeing. It applies to every child in Scotland from birth to 18, not only children with additional support needs. The Scottish Government describes it as “both an approach and framework used by services across Scotland to improve and uphold the wellbeing of children and their families”.

The key word is framework. GIRFEC is a shared way of working — a common language and a common set of ideas that a health visitor, a P3 teacher and a social worker can all use so that support joins up instead of coming at a family from five different directions. It is not, in itself, a single law that gives your child a checklist of enforceable entitlements.

SHANARRI: the eight wellbeing indicators

Wellbeing is a slippery word, so GIRFEC breaks it into eight parts. Practitioners are asked to consider all eight together when they think about how a child is doing. The eight indicators — the SHANARRI set — are:

You do not need to memorise these. But it helps to recognise them, because when a school raises a concern it will usually be framed against one of the eight. “We have a wellbeing concern around nurtured and included” is GIRFEC-speak for “we think something at home or socially is affecting this child, and we want to help”.

The Child’s Plan

Most children never need anything beyond the support every pupil gets. When a child does need a more organised response — help that involves more than one person, or that needs to be planned and reviewed — the school usually draws up a Child’s Plan under GIRFEC. It records:

• What the child needs
• Who is providing each part of the support
• What outcomes the team is working towards
• How and when progress will be reviewed

You should be consulted and involved in writing it, and you can bring a supporter to any meeting. A Child’s Plan is a genuinely useful document for keeping everyone on the same page. But it is not statutory, and that distinction becomes very important if support you have been promised does not actually materialise. For the full comparison, see our guide on the Child’s Plan versus the Coordinated Support Plan.

The Named Person: what really happened

This is the part of GIRFEC that generates the most confusion, because the policy changed dramatically and the old version is still widely quoted as if it were current.

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 originally proposed a statutory Named Person for every child — a single professional (often a health visitor or teacher) with a legal role, plus a duty on public services to share wellbeing information about children. That mandatory scheme was never brought into force.

So what exists now? A voluntary version. Most councils and health boards still provide a named person as a point of contact as a matter of good practice — typically your health visitor while your child is under five, and a promoted member of staff (often a guidance or pastoral teacher) once your child is at school. This person can help you find support and act as a single door to knock on. But it is a service, not a legal entitlement; there is no mandatory information-sharing duty behind it, and the Supreme Court was explicit that any advice a named person offers is entirely optional. If you would rather deal directly with the head teacher or the school’s ASN coordinator, you can.

How GIRFEC works in an ordinary Scottish school

For most families, GIRFEC is invisible — it is simply the reason the school, the nurse and the club all seem to be working from the same songsheet. In practice it shows up as:

1. A single point of contact. Someone at the school you can go to about your child’s wellbeing, not just their maths.
2. Wellbeing language on reports and at parents’ evening. The SHANARRI indicators, and phrases about a child being “settled”, “included” or “nurtured”. If you want help reading the rest of the report, see understanding your child’s school report.
3. A staged response. Everyday support first; a Child’s Plan if more coordination is needed; and only for a small number of children with complex, multi-agency needs, a statutory Coordinated Support Plan.
4. Transitions handled deliberately. Moving nursery to P1, or P7 to S1, is when wellbeing information is meant to be passed on so a child does not start from scratch.

Knowing which stage your child is at helps you follow all of this — our Scottish school year group calculator maps age to stage and Curriculum for Excellence level in a few seconds.

The Honest Take

GIRFEC is well-intentioned and, at its best, genuinely joins up the people around a child. The problem is the gap between what it sounds like and what it is. The language — “every child”, “wellbeing”, “named person” — makes it sound like a guarantee. It is not. It is a practice model with no enforcement mechanism of its own. A Child’s Plan is only as good as the council’s willingness to deliver it, and when that willingness runs out, GIRFEC gives you nothing to enforce. If your child’s needs are real and lasting, do not let a Child’s Plan be the end of the conversation — find out whether they meet the threshold for a statutory plan that actually has teeth.

What GIRFEC means for you as a parent

• You are meant to be a partner, not a bystander. Ask to see any plan, ask to be at any review, and bring someone with you.
• Consent matters again. With the statutory information-sharing duty gone, services should generally seek your agreement before sharing wellbeing information, except where a child-protection threshold is met.
• The framework is a door, not a ceiling. If your child needs formal, enforceable support, GIRFEC is the start of the journey through Scotland’s additional support needs system — not the end of it.
• Diagnosis is not the gatekeeper. As with ASN generally, support is based on need, not on a label — useful to know if you are waiting on an autism or ADHD assessment.

If your family also gets benefits tied to a child’s disability or additional needs, it is worth a two-minute check with our Scottish family benefits checker to make sure you are not missing anything.

Where to get independent help

• Enquire — the Scottish Government’s free, independent ASN advice service. enquire.org.uk | 0345 123 2303
• Your child’s named person or the school’s ASN coordinator — the quickest route to a conversation
• Your health visitor — the named point of contact for under-fives

GIRFEC is not something to be wary of, but it is something to understand clearly. Know the eight indicators, know that the Child’s Plan is helpful but not enforceable, and know that the Named Person is now a voluntary service rather than a legal duty. Armed with that, you can use the parts that help your child and push past the parts that do not.