1. Getting it right for every child Roadshow
Welcome
Boyd McAdam
Getting it right for every child Roadshow
May-June 2008
Welcome – slide 1
Thank you for joining us for the Getting it right for every child roadshow.
I’d like to welcome everyone. We invite to these events a wide mix of professional experience across the public and voluntary sector from universal to targeted services. To gauge who is here, could we have a show of hands: police, social work, education, health, SCRA and children’s hearings, voluntary sector,?
Thank you for making the time to join us. We recognise the different levels of awareness, knowledge and experience of Getting it right - I hope you will all find something of value today.
Housekeeping incl. on the day evaluation – a quick exercise which will help inform remaining roadshows.
Also on-line fuller evaluation in two to three week’s time.
We are keen to support your local implementation and have produced a USB memory stick which has all of recent roadshow presentations on it, including other material which may be of help to you. The sticks will be sent to you as soon as you complete the online evaluation.

2. Recognise and share progress Provide an update on developments
Aims of the day
Recognise and share progress
Provide an update on developments
Promote understanding
Increase knowledge
Support implementation
Maintain momentum
Provide clarity and encourage further activity
Aims of the day – slide 2
The title of the roadshow is Making Progress – Taking Action. The signal from this is that Getting it right is here to stay and we also wish to acknowledge the huge amount of progress at a national level, across pathfinder areas, with our learning partners, and of course at local level right across the country.
Today is about updating you. We have several members from different backgrounds and skills: e.g. from health, social work, police. You can identify them by their red badges. We’ll identify them later. My team can help with any knowledge gaps during the day or if you wish to contact us later – generic business cards.
The aim of today is to reinforce the values, principles and core components of the programme. You will have a chance to share knowledge, understanding and experience through discussion.
We will be keen to hear more about your progress and hope to provide you with a picture of what the world might look like in a few years time to support any positive momentum for change.
I’d like to lead with some comments the Minister recorded about GIRFEC. The change of Government a year ago led to us reviewing GIRFEC and its implementation
Play ADAM INGRAM DVD
Clear that GIRFEC is central to the Government’s policies and supports the Manifesto commitment on early years, and their wish for early intervention.
So what is the purpose of GIRFEC?

3. Slide 3: Cartoon Slide - I thought you were bringing up the children
Getting it right is seeking to avoid what you see on the screen happening. For those at the back who can’t see the text it says: …..

4. Slide 4: Cartoon - Shaded blue box on our org chart, meet dotted red arrow
GIRFEC is also a complex change management programme with many strands of activity going on at national and local level. At times we can feel a bit like this cartoon – read text. Today is about providing the overview and direction.

5. The Getting it right for every child approach
Different from other policies
Underpins all services for children and young people
Children and young people at the centre
Driven at a local level
Supported by core
components, principles
and values
Slide 5
Getting it right is not like other policy areas that are confined to one group of children or service area. It is a foundation approach that puts children and young people firmly at the centre of action and underpins all services that impacts on their lives
It does not have a set starting or end point: that will be several years off. Rather it is driven locally according to your structures and governance and the pace that suits you.
Getting it right is not just an aspiration, it is supported with clear principles, values and components and seeks to change the way we think and act to help children

6. Getting it right for every child
NATIONAL UPDATE

7. Strategic Objectives
A Scotland where everyone can flourish through increasing sustainable economic growth.
Smarter
Healthier
Wealthier & Fairer
Safer & Stronger
Greener
Context – slide 7 Government’s strategic aims
The Scottish Government has one overarching objective, that of sustainable economic growth. All activity is intended to support that, underpinned by 5 main strategic objectives.
“Greener” - reduced bureaucracy, fewer meetings, less travel, less paper

8. Concordat: National outcomes
A Scotland where everyone can flourish through increasing sustainable economic growth. 15 national outcomes
45 national indicators
A new approach to Government – partnership, collaboration and local ownership
Slide 8 - Concordat
Underneath these lie the national outcomes agreed between central and local government last autumn. I will not dwell on these as they should be familiar to you now. The 15 outcomes are spelled out in full in your packs. Several apply directly to children and young people. If there is one I would like to single out it is number 4 which sets out the 4 capacities: successful individuals, confident learners, effective contributors, responsible citizens. These form the working definition in GIRFEC for well-being for all children supported by the indicators: healthy, achieving, safe, nurture, included etc
There are then the 45 national indicators, where certain indicators relate directly to children and young people. Single outcome agreements at local authority level are expected to be agreed next month, along with local indicators to support both the local and national outcomes.
Why am I explaining all of this?
Everyone is now signed up to achieving the national outcomes. How you go about achieving these outcomes is part of the Single outcome agreement. We – and COSLA - believe that GIRFEC in itself is a positive approach to helping children and will contribute directly to several of these outcomes. But it will also be supported in due course by electronic information sharing through the ecare framework which will require all agencies to capture and record information in a certain way for sharing where necessary. We are here to explain how these strands fit together and encourage suitable local activity to support GIRFEC implementation.
In addition, all of this is intended to cut back on the different ways of measuring performance. Combined with the action arising out of the Crerar report on inspections we are seeking to reduce reporting and inspection cycles, freeing up agencies and services.
This is a new collaborative approach to policy development. There is a new tone of facilitation rather than direction and it is important to understand how this impacts on GIRFEC implementation.

9. What you said you wanted
Clear and consistent information
A transparent national approach
Access to appropriate tools, models and guidance
You said you need:
clear and consistent information that is joined up across policies and services;
a transparent national approach which supports and drives implementation
access to appropriate tools, models and guidance as part of a national delivery framework.
As the Minister indicated, you want to know whether you need to wait or whether to get on with things. The advice is to get on with things but with an eye to the national developments which are emerging.

10. Strategic Direction
Getting it right for every child will achieve national implementation by supporting, facilitating and promoting change at local level while leading on those areas that require a national solution.
Over the coming years, Getting it right for every child will support and facilitate the removal of obstacles that can block children from getting the best start in life and moving successfully through their journey from birth to adulthood.
Slide 10 - Strategic direction
We are determined to support, facilitate and promote change at local level while leading on those areas that require a national solution and in doing so have taken into account what you as stakeholders and partners have been saying.
If asked what it is we are trying to do, the text in the second bullet point says it all. ………….. the challenge for us all is to translate that into something meaningful for you.

11. Culture, Systems & Practice
Learning together, co-operating, children at the centre.
SYSTEMS
Streamlining, simplifying, improving effectiveness
PRACTICE
Appropriate, proportionate and timely help, shared models, tools, protocols
Slide 11 – culture, systems, practice
GIRFEC is not just about ensuring that what people do is co-ordinated. It is about a fundamental shift in the way we all work and relate to children and making sure that where inter-agency activity comes together in a way to support the individual child and young person
Agencies have naturally, over time, developed their own cultures, systems and practices.
GIRFEC seeks to break down these differences where they get in the way of helping children and young people. GIRFEC seeks to reduce eligibility tests, thresholds and gate keeping.
We must move forward with a culture that supports learning from each other including the ability to learn from mistakes. We need to develop and share a set of values and principles that reinforce such a cultural shift right across Scotland.
We need to move to a place where we can streamline systems, simplify complicated processes, provide the right information at the right time
Practice should build on the unique contribution that each professional brings to a child which should be supported by shared protocols and tools. At all times practitioners’ should get on and act on need rather than on labels or categories.

12. Getting it right for every child: Building a network of support around each child
Help is:
Appropriate
Proportionate
Timely
Slide 12 – (concentric circles)
The essence of the approach is that you place the child at the centre. Whatever their needs or how they are described you start by supporting the child and family and their network wherever possible.
Then, as necessary, you move out through universal and targeted services to multi agency activity building on existing relationships with midwives, health visitors, school nurses, and education staff wherever possible.
Ultimately and only where formal statutory intervention is needed to improve outcomes, should such action be taken.
And sometimes you may have to move very quickly out from the centre.
The concept is to build a network of support around the child’s needs rather than the child moving around or even up and down tariffs or thresholds to get help.
Within existing legislation we may have to observe certain procedures but the drive to act should be as far as possible determined by what should be done to improve the child’s outcomes.

13. Core components Focus on improving outcomes
Integral role for children, young people and families
Making the most of universal services
A common approach to gaining consent and to sharing information where appropriate
A coordinated and unified approach to identifying concerns, actions and outcomes
Streamlined planning processes that lead to efficient provision for children
A confident and competent workforce
A lead professional to co-ordinate where necessary
The capacity to share demographic, assessment, planning and outcome information
Slide 13 – Core components
You have consistently asked for clarity on the core components and what Getting it right will look like in practice. These will come as no surprise. These are the minimum we are asking local areas to work towards
A focus on improving outcomes for children, young people and their families based on a shared understanding of wellbeing
An integral role for children, their families and those with a relevant interest in reaching the decisions that affect children’s lives
Maximising the resource of universal services to address concerns at the earliest point themselves, where they can, bringing others around them as needed.
A common approach to gaining consent and to sharing information where appropriate
A coordinated and unified approach to identifying concerns, actions and outcomes based on helping Scotland’s children reach their full potential
Streamlined planning processes that lead to efficient provision of help for children
Consistent high standards of joint working and communication, across Scotland, where more than one agency needs to be involved
A confident and competent workforce in the statutory universal and targeted services as well as the independent sector
A lead professional to co-ordinate and monitor multi-agency activity where necessary
The capacity to share demographic, assessment, planning and outcome information electronically within and across agency boundaries
Whatever you are doing locally you ought to be able to assess your activity against these core components. And the values and principles of GIRFEC, more about which shortly.
We hope you will understand and feel a part of all of these by the end of the day and see how your own activity, at whatever stage you are at, is moving in the direction of the GIRFEC approach.
Before I continue with the national update, I’d like to run another very short DVD which draws together what I have just described and give an overview of Getting it right for every child.
RUN DVD (3 mins) of GIRFEC
The DVD is available on our website for downloading. Every time I see that film it reinforces for me the concept of well-being and the indicators and how these need to be individual considered for each child if we are to make them successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens

14. Learning from the process of pathfinding
Testing and developing
Applying principles, identifying barriers
Building blocks and green shoots
Two pathfinders, different models
Highland – all system change
Domestic abuse – single trigger approach
Learn and share from the experiences of pathfinders and learning partners
Slide 14 - Learning from the process of pathfinding
The Government decided at an early stage to ‘test’ the Getting it right approach through a number of pathfinder areas.
We have the support of two pathfinders projects - Highland, and children and young people experiencing domestic abuse – who are testing these components and putting them into practice. The pathfinders are implementing different models with different implications for practice. You will hear more about these shortly. What I will say now is that the pathfinders have taken the core components, principles and values and worked out what needs to be developed and implemented to put Getting it right into practice. Highland now have their draft guidance and associated training materials and tools on their website.
You will need to consider how either approach might be applied to your circumstances.
We are also working with North and South Lanarkshires as a learning partner to see how transferable the experiences and approach in the pathfinders are to another area.
The GIRFEC section on the SG web has recently been updated and is a useful source of material and updates and all of you will be invited to subscribe to the GIRFEC newsletter, if you don’t already, which will help to keep you in touch with national developments. There is a link to Highland’s website. Meantime, we would encourage you to use the available materials to raise questions in your own areas, discuss some of the detail of implementation and how it fits with your progress, noting the differences and similarities with the journey you are taking.

15. Slide 15 – My World Triangle
I‘d like to take just a few moments to describe the practice model which has been developed and is being tested. The three slides are in your packs but I thought a brief explanation of how they are linked would help.
First of all, when looking at a child it is important to look at the child as a whole taking into account all relevant factors and circumstances in their life. To help with this we are using the
My World Triangle which will be familiar from the development work undertaken for integrated assessment. The triangle will also be familiar from work undertaken elsewhere in the UK.
The difference in Scotland is that we have put the child right at the centre.
Assessment is only the start. When planning what to do to help the child you need to know from where the child or young person draws help and support and where these are negative influences. For each person these will be different: for some, parental support will be positive, for others, negative. That is why the model developed for Highland and likely to form the basis of the national model, then applies the resilience matrix to help identify where services need to target help.

16. Resilience Matrix: A Resilience Matrix for Analysing Information
Vulnerability
Adversity
Protective Environment
Normal development under difficult conditions e.g. secure attachment, outgoing temperament, Sociability, problem solving skills
Life events or circumstances posing a threat to healthy development e.g. loss, abuse, neglect
Factors in the child’s environment acting as buffer to the negative effects of adverse experience
Those characteristics of the child, their family circle and wider community which might threaten or challenge healthy development e.g. disability, racism, lack of or poor attachment
Slide 16 – Resilience Matrix
This has been adapted from work undertaken by Brigid Daniel and Sally Wassell, with their permission.
Adapted from Daniel and Wassell (2002) Assessing and Promoting Resilience in Vulnerable Children
(3 workbooks), London, Jessica Kingsley

17. The Practice Model Slide 17 – Practice Model
All of this leads to the practice model which seeks to identify concerns around –healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible, included and safe – requiring assessment and analysis by relevant professionals, leading to a plan of action to tackle those areas requiring attention. This model should be applied in any circumstances and able to address any needs or confirmation of needs. You’ll see these slides appearing later in the day.

18. Historic foundations
Integrated Community Schools – Learning Communities
Integrated Children’s Services Plans
SureStart
Changing Children’s Services
Hidden Harm
Child Care partnerships
Youth Justice
Mental Health – SNAP report
Child protection reform programme
Getting our priorities right
Hall 4
Additional Support for Learning
Integrated Assessment Frameworks
Slide Historic foundations
All of this has not sprung out of nowhere. There has been a wide range of activity over the years, most of it positive and constructive activity, which is incrementally moving us in the same direction. For Scotland’s Children; It’s everyone’s job ……
You might be building from the work begun in developing Integrated Community Schools and Learning Communities or progressing from the foundations of your Integrated Children’s Services Plans.
You will have responded to some of the policy drivers such as Hall 4, The Child Protection Reform Programme, the ASL Act, CAPSM, the SNAP report or Better Behaviour Better Schools.
And some of you will be building from integrated service models such as Surestart, Changing Children’s Services, Youth Justice, more choices more chances or the Campus Police initiative, to name but a few.
Some very impressive progress has also been achieved through work under the umbrella of Integrated Assessment Framework development in Scotland.
What we need to do more of is remove the confusion over the perceptions of other developments and how they fit with GIRFEC. It’s important to underline how much these areas of work support Getting it right for every child.

19. One destination, different journeys
No single roadmap to achieving our shared goals
Striving for a shared understanding of the approach and the destination
Not starting from scratch – building on success
Slide 19 - One destination, different journeys
The Getting it right programme recognises that there is no single roadmap for achieving the desired outcomes for children – outcomes that we all share.
The key to Getting it right is a shared understanding of the approach and the destination.
Progress will take place from different starting points, in different ways and at different times, building on good local foundations and lessons emerging in pathfinder areas.
But it is important to acknowledge how much progress has been achieved. We are hearing of multi-agency structures set up to take Getting it right forward, in some areas dedicated posts have been recruited and in others you are building from the foundations I mentioned in the last slide.

20. Challenges for us Joining up Working in partnership
Developing eCare framework
What to disseminate and when
How best to disseminate
Slide 20 – challenges for us
Our journey is no less challenging than yours. We need to work proactively across the government to increase policy links and create clear messages that make sense to everyone and which will help promote culture, systems and practice change. That touches on the entire children’s workforce, stretching across the statutory and voluntary sectors and reaching into adult services working with parents/ carers.
There is increasing recognition of these links: references within documents or in the title of documents to “getting it right”. But we must take care not to create new silos under the GIRFEC banner. That said, the recognition of how policies fit together is a move in the right direction. The developing Early Years framework, published at the end of March, also features strongly in our thinking and connections.
We need to work more in partnership, understanding better what is needed to make the difference for children and families and the constraints of the resources available. We need to inform those who have the authority to reach decisions on priorities what is required.
We need to ensure that the electronic communication is supported. While possibly necessary to reduce burdens on practitioners, electronic information sharing cannot drive change in culture or practice. It can facilitate the new ways of working. But we need to make sure that the environment exists in which this can take place
And we need to be clear what we as the Government wish to put out for dissemination and when we are best able to do that. We have also thought through how we can do this in a way which best makes sense and after lunch we’ll hear about the Learning Community we are facilitating.

21. What we are doing Guidance and information materials
A GIRFEC information sharing model, minimum requirements and data standards
Testing of pathfinder activity and tools
Exchange of information
Learning together: learning community
Slide 21 – What we are doing to help you
The areas we are currently working on include the
Guidance: we are taking from the work in the pathfinders and, in due course from learning partners, what can inform national implementation. This national emerging thinking will be available soon
We have a clear lead on the joining up of electronic systems across Scotland to help practitioners communicate better around individual children through the development of the eCare framework.
We need to make sure that we are clear about what constitutes a chronology, how access to information is controlled and safeguarded, how the relevant information can be brought together and viewed for the required purpose of assessment analysis and planning. And done in a way which allows practitioners from any particular profession or any particular agency to understand what has been recorded and why and to make sense of the information.
Testing of pathfinder activity and tools - both in practical application and in evaluation
Learning together

22. What we are doing: Practice Tools
The practice model
Well-being indicators
My World triangle
Resilience matrix
Child’s Plan
Child’s Record
Slide 22 – Practice Tools
I mentioned earlier your calls for appropriate tools, models and guidance as part of a national delivery framework that will support local implementation.
We have developed the national practice model I described earlier, the well-being indicators which I mentioned following the film, the My World Triangle, a Resilience Matrix, the Child’s Plan and the shared record.
Copies of all of these materials are on your table to use as part of the table discussions to follow this session.

23. Some emerging themes: PROFESSIONAL CULTURES Clarity of messages
Better anticipation of what is needed
need to support specific interventions and longer-term outcomes
SYSTEMS & PROCESSES
real cases and scenarios seems to be highly effective
Skills development and confidence-building in universal services
Business process mapping: identifies systemic blocks, duplication and non-purposeful activities: most effective where practitioners are engaged
Gate-keeping – transitional or long term?
Slide 23 – Evaluation: emerging themes CULTURE & SYSTEMS & PROCESSES
We are working with a team of evaluators from Edinburgh University who are engaged with the pathfinders as part of an on-going evaluation process.
The team has asking questions, such as:
what developments in children’s services were already in place which reflect GIRFEC principles,
what developments were implemented over the pathfinder phase,
to what extent did practice change in the intended direction, and
did the changes lead to improved outcomes for children.
Lessons shared from this and the pathfinding process will offer great insights for others, whatever point they are at. In the early stages they can highlight the fundamental building blocks of GIRFEC we would expect to see in place and where we can begin to see the green shoots of development and change.
The themes emerging from evaluation can be grouped around three main areas.
[It time and wish to expand on the slides]
For professional cultures
PERCEPTIONS: GIRFEC is widely perceived amongst practitioners as a kind of broad church of aspirations for staff, agencies, communities, families and children. Whilst this is a core strength, different stakeholders respond to and apply the messages differently. We need to maintain clarity in our messages and priorities.
WELLBEING INDICATORS: Where the well-being indicators are embedded in the forms developed as new practice tools, they are gradually becoming internalised by practitioners, but this is a process that takes time.
GENERATING CONFIDENCE ETC.: Given our emphasis on the role of universal services, there is growing recognition that targeted and specialist services may need to become comfortable in trusting their colleagues in universal services to hold responsibility for a particular child and family.
We are seeing signs of a growing recognition of the need to understand and anticipate the information requirements of others including proactively collecting information that may be of use to other professionals.
OUTCOMES: The focus in early stages tends to be on process outcomes, and achievable short-term outcomes (eg around referral rates). The next phase is to support specific interventions and longer-term outcomes for children and their families (eg children’s resilience, parenting and child development).
SYSTEMS & PROCESSES
TRAINING: Training which centres on working through real cases and scenarios seems to be highly effective though in the early stages the focus is on the new processes and systems and the beginning of awareness-raising around the core concepts and ways of thinking. Training needs to take into account the significant contribution of paraprofessional roles.
CAPACITY: As you would expect, resource issues have been identified around work loads, volume of change and concerns surrounding expectations. Skills development and confidence-building in universal services will be particularly significant.
BUSINESS PROCESS MAPPING: Though it did prove to be time consuming, pathfinders found the approach to be useful in identifying systemic blocks, duplication and non-purposeful activities. It is most effective where practitioners are engaged in the process and it is used as a process tool rather than a one-off exercise.
GATEKEEPING: At this stage it is not clear whether pre-screening groups these will be transitional or whether they will become permanent. As Getting it right becomes embedded as an approach we’ll need to see whether these multi-agency groups will lessen in use in future.

24. Emerging themes
PRACTICES
Identifying and recording concerns: training in the new forms and involvement of front-line professionals critically important
Information sharing:
Assessment and planning
Slide 24 – PRACTICES
IDENTIFYING AND RECORDING CONCERNS
The value of training in the new forms and the involvement of front-line professionals in their trialling is emerging as critically important in ensuring acceptance and use in the spirit intended.
INFORMATION-SHARING
Three trends:
a clearer understanding that information-sharing is only the first step, before analysis leading to appropriate and proportionate actions.
practitioners are increasingly anticipating the information needs of their colleagues in other services.
We are seeing marked improvements in the quality of the information being shared, including how it mirrors the information needs of the recipient agency.
ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING
Practitioners who are unfamiliar with this approach are going through a three-stage development:
They are learning to position their concerns within the appropriate wellbeing indicators;
They are developing their ability to provide reasons or evidence in support of their analysis of the concern.
They are using the indicators and the My World Assessment triangle to determine desired outcomes for the child and to specify appropriate, timely and proportionate interventions intended to achieve these.
REVIEWING PROGRESS AND UNMET NEEDS
Work is ongoing to determine how we will know when we are ‘Getting it right’ for the child, especially over time. It is too early to say what the impact is yet.
That brings to an end the national update section. If questions have arisen jot them down and we’ll do our best to respond either over lunch, during the table discussions or at the end of the day.