Getting it right for everyone (GIRFE)

Overview 

Getting it right for everyone (GIRFE) is a proposed multi-agency approach of support and services from young adulthood to end of life care. We are co-designing GIRFE with place-based pathfinders and partners. 

Pathfinders and partners are health and social care professionals, from local authorities across Scotland, who worked collaboratively with the GIRFE policy team and the Office of the Chief Designer, within the Scottish Government, to co-design the GIRFE practice model and engage with people with lived experience.

GIRFE is about providing a more personalised way to access help and support when it is needed.   

It will place the person at the centre of all the decision making that affects them, with a joined-up consistent approach, regardless of the support needed at any stage of life.  

GIRFE will form the future practice model of all health, social care and public sector professionals, and shape the design and delivery of services, ensuring that people’s needs are met. 

Strategic context 

GIRFE:  

• builds on existing adult best practice and learning from Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC)  

• will provide a national practice model to embed inter-agency working 

• does not replace the Community Health and Social Care Integrated Services Framework, but provides a model to deliver the framework that supports person centred outcomes 

• is part of a programme to improve population health and wellbeing, reduce health inequalities and create sustainable health and care services. Read more: Care and Wellbeing Portfolio Board 

GIRFE prototyping  

In January 2024, pathfinders and partners created storyboards as part of the prototyping process.  Storyboarding helped to create a visual representation of the various points in a person’s life where they may need care and support and where GIRFE could enable improvements.   

The prototyping process within co-design helps to create visual representations of concepts and ideas, whilst also exploring useability, before testing these ideas and concepts in live environments.   

Pathfinders considered questions such as: 

• which support agencies could be involved in a person’s life 

• how a person first interacts with services 

• who could be a part of a person’s support team, to achieve the best outcomes 

Once the storyboarding phase was complete, it was agreed which areas of work around creating ‘the team around the person’ would be taken forward into prototyping.  

The team around the person 

Within the ‘team around the person’ theme, pathfinder teams and partners have been building prototypes by working in their local areas with people with lived experience. These prototypes are around the concepts of: 

• my team 

• my coordinator 

• peer support 

• sharing information 

• my plan  

• positive first contact 

GIRFE principles  

The ambition is that professionals working in health, social care, and beyond, can embed these principles into their work to start getting it right for everyone. 

Our current draft GIRFE principles are:   

• I have the information I need to make decisions about my life, in a way that works for me, and I am supported to understand what options are available to me, and trusted to know what is right for me 

• the people who support me take the time to listen and understand me as a person and we consider my whole life when making decisions about my life

• I know that I can be clear about what matters to me, and I trust that my choices will be respected and understood by the people who support me 

• if I need to access services or support, I am treated with kindness, dignity and respect at all times.  

• the people I am involved with work together with me and each other to share information, in a way that is accessible to me and develop a clear understanding of how to support my wellbeing  

Within these principles, ‘I’ or ‘me’ can be substituted to include the addition of ‘my guardian’ or ‘my power of attorney’ where relevant. 

GIRFE Pathfinders and Partners

GIRFE is being tested and developed in local areas with practitioners and the people the initiative is designed to benefit. This is helping us understand how it will be interpreted and embedded in different contexts.   

We created a GIRFE design school as a support model to help pathfinders to come together, get ready for co-design work and engage people with lived experience on a specific policy area, problem exploration or redesign challenge.  

They are aligned to 5 thematic areas:  

• people in prisons  

• people in alcohol and drug services  

• people registered at deep-end GP practices - those which cover the most deprived populations 

• families with multiple and/or complex needs - and young people in transition from GIRFEC to GIRFE  

• older people and frailty  

There are currently 6 GIRFE place-based pathfinders: 

• East Ayrshire HSCP

• Aberdeenshire HSCP

• Aberdeen City HSCP

• North Lanarkshire HSCP

• Orkney HSCP

• Fife HSCP

GIRFE partners

There are also 3 GIRFE partners, who joined the co-design process in January 2024: 

• South Ayrshire HSCP
• Moray HSCP
• Falkirk  HSCP

Process to date 

Discovery - winter 2022 to summer 2023 

Pathfinders worked through the GIRFE design school, embedding co-design, and engaging with people with lived experience to develop person-centred journey maps.   

Ideation - summer 2023 to winter 2023  

Pathfinders took part in a collaborative sense-making process, with the insights from the person-centred journey maps, before engaging with people with lived experience to create ideas and concepts that could help tackle some of the issues raised.   

Prototyping - winter 2023 to summer 2024 

Pathfinders and partners co-designed prototypes, based on those ideas and concepts, with people with lived experience.  

Testing - summer 2024 – autumn 2024

Our GIRFE pathfinder and partner teams continued to share insights from embedding the first iteration of the ‘team around the person’ toolkit.

Feedback from this first phase of embedding GIRFE, within pathfinder and partner teams local areas, has supported the second version of the toolkit and provided recommendations for next steps. This second iteration has formed the basis of the toolkit for embedding GIRFE within a wider national context. 

Autumn 2024

The GIRFE Team Around The Person Toolkit, and tailored support and advice, is available to assist organisations across Scotland to embed GIRFE.

Please contact the GIRFE Policy Team via email (GIRFE@gov.scot) to request the Team Around The Person Toolkit, to arrange to attend a GIRFE information drop-in session or to meet with the GIRFE Policy Team.

Videos on an introduction to GIRFE

Using the GIRFE logo  

We have developed a GIRFE logo to ensure a consistent identity for GIRFE across Scotland, which can be used by pathfinders and partners on supporting information and materials related to GIRFE. 

For access to the logo, please contact  GIRFE@gov.scot.