GIRFEC Scotland: How SHANARRI Works and How to Use It in Meetings

You'll see GIRFEC and SHANARRI mentioned in practically every document the school sends home about your child. Most parents nod along without quite knowing what either of them means. That's a missed opportunity, because GIRFEC is not just policy background — it's a framework you can actively use to describe your child's difficulties in language that professionals and authorities are legally required to take seriously.

This guide explains what GIRFEC is, what the eight SHANARRI indicators actually mean, and how to use this language strategically at meetings.

What GIRFEC is

Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) is the Scottish Government's overarching national framework for improving the wellbeing of all children and young people in Scotland. Unlike the ASL Act 2004 — which applies specifically to children with additional support needs — GIRFEC applies to every child. It's not a special education policy. It's the backbone of how Scottish services (education, health, social care, police, housing) are meant to work together around individual children.

The framework came out of a recognition that when children fall through the cracks, it's usually because services are working in silos. GIRFEC introduced a shared language, a shared set of outcomes (the SHANARRI indicators), and a shared planning tool (the Child's Plan) intended to get different agencies working from the same page.

For parents navigating the ASN system, GIRFEC matters because:

1. The SHANARRI indicators give you a structured vocabulary for describing how your child is struggling
2. The Child's Plan is the multi-agency planning document most families will use before reaching the threshold for a statutory Co-ordinated Support Plan
3. The Named Person concept gives you a designated professional contact who is supposed to be looking out for your child

The eight SHANARRI wellbeing indicators

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

Here's what each one means in practice — and how it translates to the educational context:

Safe — Protected from abuse, neglect, or harm at home, in school, and in the community. In school, this extends to protection from bullying, physical safety in the environment, and freedom from emotional harm by peers or adults. If your child is being persistently bullied and the school isn't responding adequately, the "Safe" indicator is failing.

Healthy — Experiencing the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. This includes access to health services, emotional wellbeing, and the management of chronic conditions. A child with unmanaged anxiety that prevents them from attending school, or a child whose ADHD medication hasn't been reviewed in two years, is failing on "Healthy."

Achieving — Supported and guided in learning and developing skills, including literacy, numeracy, and wider personal development. If your child is significantly behind their peers in reading and the school hasn't put in targeted literacy support, they are failing to "Achieve." This is the indicator most directly connected to academic progress.

Nurtured — Growing up in a loving, stable, caring environment. In school, this means feeling emotionally secure, having positive relationships with teachers, and feeling that the school cares about them as a person. Children who are frequently excluded, restrained, or treated punitively are often failing on "Nurtured."

Active — Having opportunities to participate in activities that contribute to healthy growth and development — physical activities, play, sport, and creative pursuits. For children with ASN, barriers to participation in school activities (PE, school trips, extra-curricular clubs) are relevant here.

Respected — Being given a voice and involved in decisions that affect them. This is a structural indicator about whether the child's own views are being sought and considered. Under the ASL Act, children aged 12-15 have statutory rights to be heard in their own ASN assessments. "Respected" gives you language to challenge meetings where your child's preferences have been ignored.

Responsible — Taking an active, positive role within their schools and communities. For children with ASN, this often means being given opportunities to contribute and develop independence, rather than being positioned as passive recipients of support.

Included — Having help to overcome social, educational, physical, and economic inequalities and being accepted as part of their community. Excluded from mainstream classes, isolated during lunch, unable to participate in school trips — these are "Included" failures.

How to use SHANARRI in meetings

This is where it gets practical. Using SHANARRI language in meetings does two things. First, it signals to professionals that you understand the framework they're working within, which changes the dynamic. Second, it forces the conversation onto outcome terms — not "what is the school currently doing" but "is my child's wellbeing actually improving."

Before any meeting, take five minutes and go through each indicator. Ask yourself: is my child actually achieving this? Where are the gaps? Write down specific examples.

Then, in the meeting, use the language directly:

Instead of: "My child is really struggling at school and not making progress."

Try: "I'm concerned that my child's 'Achieving' indicator is failing — they're now 18 months behind in reading and the gap is widening. I'm also concerned about 'Included' — they're spending most of lunchtimes alone because they can't access the social dynamics of the playground without support."

This framing does several things. It uses the authority's own assessment criteria. It's specific. It positions you as someone tracking outcomes, not just venting frustration. And it creates a paper trail — if you send a follow-up email using this language, you've documented that you raised specific wellbeing concerns at a specific meeting.

Another example: if your child is experiencing school-related anxiety and the school is minimizing it, you might say: "My child's 'Healthy' and 'Safe' indicators are both at risk — the anxiety is affecting their physical health (sleep, eating) and the refusal to attend means they're not in a safe, supervised environment for large parts of the week."

Schools are required to consider SHANARRI outcomes when planning support. Using the language makes it harder to dismiss your concerns as subjective parental worry.

The Named Person

Under GIRFEC, every child in Scotland is entitled to a Named Person — a designated professional who acts as a single point of contact for the child and family. In early years and primary school, this is typically a health visitor or the head teacher. In secondary school, it's usually the guidance teacher or pastoral care teacher.

The Named Person's role is not to provide all the support themselves, but to be the person you go to when something isn't working. If agencies aren't coordinating, if referrals have been made but nothing has happened, if you're not sure who to call — the Named Person is the starting point.

In practice, the effectiveness of the Named Person varies enormously. In some schools, the guidance teacher relationship is genuinely valuable. In others, it's a formal designation with no real engagement unless you push. Knowing who your child's Named Person is and engaging them proactively is worth doing early — build the relationship before you need it in a crisis.

If your child is moving from primary to secondary school, there should be a transition meeting involving the Named Person from both schools. This is especially important for children with ASN — transition is one of the highest-risk periods for support to break down.

The Child's Plan under GIRFEC

When a child needs coordinated support from more than one service, GIRFEC calls for the creation of a Child's Plan. This is a multi-agency planning document that brings together the input of education, health, social care, and any other relevant services around a shared set of objectives for the child.

One important GIRFEC principle is that a child shouldn't have multiple different plans from different agencies. The Child's Plan is meant to be the single document that everyone contributes to. In practice, a child might have an IEP maintained by the school and a Child's Plan coordinated across agencies, but the intent is for these to be aligned rather than duplicated.

The Child's Plan is coordinated by a Lead Professional — a named individual responsible for ensuring the different agencies are actually communicating and that the plan is being implemented. The Lead Professional is usually from the service with the most significant involvement (often education or social work, depending on the child's primary needs).

Crucially: the Child's Plan, like the IEP, is non-statutory. It's an administrative tool, not a legal guarantee. The fact that it's beautifully written and everyone signed off on it does not mean the authority can be compelled to deliver it through a Tribunal. Only a Co-ordinated Support Plan carries that level of enforceability.

For a complete understanding of where the Child's Plan sits within the wider planning hierarchy — IEP, Child's Plan, and CSP — see our post on IEPs in Scotland.

What GIRFEC means for your advocacy

Think of SHANARRI as your observation framework and the Child's Plan process as your escalation pathway. When informal classroom support isn't working, the GIRFEC framework provides the mechanism to bring other agencies to the table. Use it.

The Scotland CSP & Additional Support Blueprint at /uk/scotland/iep-guide/ includes a SHANARRI-based meeting preparation checklist and template language for requesting a Child's Plan under GIRFEC when school-level support alone is not meeting your child's needs. Understanding this framework is the single most effective thing you can do to improve the quality of professional conversations about your child.

GIRFEC is everyone's framework. Learn it and use it.

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