Transcript NHSGGC Operational Group (Partnerships) 7.4.09. NHSGGC

Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC)
Rod Burns
Getting it right for every child/
Children’s disability team
NMCN for Children
with Exceptional Healthcare Needs:
GIRFEC and Children’s Disability
September 29, 2010
Why Getting it right for every child?
• Long-term programme of change, foundation for
work with all children and young people
• Well-being of children and young people at the
heart of thinking, planning, action
• Strong emphasis on flexibility
• Transformative - shifting the way services function in
regard to children
• Involves major culture, system, practice change
Why is the GIRFEC approach necessary?
Looked After
Children
Young
runaways
Curriculum
for Excellence
Additional
Support for
Learning
Workforce
Skills
More Choices
More Chances
Equally Well
Child
Protection
Young Carers
Children’s
Hearings
Early Years
Framework
Achieving
Our Potential
Domestic
Abuse
Youth Justice
Public Services
Reform
Disabled children
Parental
substance abuse
Parents
and carers
GIRFEC and Children’s Disability
• Traditionally, policy affecting disabled children
fragmented
• Disconnect between education, social work, health,
housing, third sector and so on
• Added to challenging landscape
• Occasionally impenetrable, even within SG!
• Opportunity in late 2009 to fuse children’s disability
remit into GIRFEC team, approach to children’s
services
GIRFEC and Children’s Disability, contd
• But much more than structural change
• Fundamental compatibility between the GIRFEC
approach and needs of disabled children
• Strongly child-centred
• Children’s individual needs determining flexible
approaches
• Streamlining, minimising bureaucracy
GIRFEC and Children’s Disability, contd
• Improved assessment, info-sharing – reducing need
to constantly retell information
• Focused on outcomes – positive change and better
lives
• Leadership at all levels essential – strategic,
operational, practitioner, family
• Not a new system, initiative or structure but redesign,
refocusing of existing processes
• Culture change perhaps most important,
challenging
Wider Work – FSDC
• Work with FSDC Liaison Project – key to assisting
better lives
• Significant achievements so far
• Charter for Scotland’s Disabled Children
• Diary Project, Baseline Survey
• Large membership, supporter base
• New challenges as first project manager moves on,
but also new opportunities within rapidly developing
context
Wider Work – National Review
• PSR bill process, large interest in children’s disability
amendments
• Negotiation, consensus
• Opportunity to work in partnership – SG, CoSLA,
FSDC – during influential time (late 2010, into 2011)
• Commitment to broad look at children’s disability
services, better outcomes for children
• Working through 2010 to end of year report on
progress
Wider Work – Moving and Handling
• In addition to strategic work, leading practical
change
• Ministers accepted all but two recommendations,
Handle with Care
• Currently running four drafting groups
• Programme of meetings, work through winter
• Drafting process into 2011, with launch and
communications activity to follow
Wider Work – Organisational Support
• Perhaps ‘old-fashioned’, but still hugely important
• Directly sponsoring a range of groups providing
direct support to families
• Advice, advocacy, maximising resources
• Very well known, large – Contact a Family, Family
Fund, Capability
• Also smaller – Butterfly Trust, Sleep Scotland
Care Co-Ordination/Lead Professional
• Not dwell on this issue (detailed Highland, D&G
and Borders experiences to come)
• Important to stress that key working/care
coordination already established (with relevant
skillsets) prior to GIRFEC; by doing one you’re doing
the other
• GIRFEC not about replacing, or displacing, existing
good practice which works
• Key balance – holistic approach to supporting
child and family, drawing on specialist expertise
around children’s complex needs
Going Forward
• Excellent position for children’s disability
• At heart of long-term vision for flexible child-centred
services in Scotland
• Not complacent – transformation GIRFEC seeks must
also happen in support for all children across all
agencies
• As GIRFEC rolls out, momentum for change will boost
children’s disability agenda, including focus on
children with complex needs
Contact Details
Rod Burns
Getting it right for every child/
Children’s disability team
2-B North, Victoria Quay
Edinburgh, EH6 6QQ
(0131) 244 0253
[email protected]
www.scotland.gov.uk/gettingitright