GIRFEC Wellbeing Wheel: A Practical Guide for Foster Carers

If you're going through the fostering approval process in Scotland, you'll encounter the term GIRFEC early and often. It will appear in your Skills to Foster training, in the Child's Plan of every looked-after child, and in conversations with your supervising social worker. But most introductory explanations stop at the definition and never get to what it means in practice.

Here's what GIRFEC actually means for your day-to-day life as a foster carer.

What GIRFEC Is

GIRFEC stands for Getting It Right For Every Child. It is Scotland's national approach to improving outcomes for all children and young people, and it has been embedded in Scottish policy and law since it was first developed in 2006. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 placed key elements of GIRFEC on a statutory footing.

GIRFEC is not a form or a checklist. It is a framework — a shared language and a set of principles that all professionals working with children in Scotland are expected to use. Social workers, teachers, health visitors, foster carers, and Children's Hearing Panel members all operate within it.

The framework has two main components: the concept of a Named Person (though this element has been substantially revised following legal challenges) and the Wellbeing Wheel, which is the part that matters most in daily fostering practice.

The Wellbeing Wheel: SHANARRI

The GIRFEC Wellbeing Wheel is built around eight Wellbeing Indicators, remembered by the acronym SHANARRI:

Safe — the child is protected from abuse, neglect, harm, and exploitation, and grows up in an environment where they feel secure.

Healthy — the child has the best possible physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing, with access to appropriate health care, dental checks, and a nutritious diet.

Achieving — the child is supported and guided in their learning, school attendance, and the development of skills for life.

Nurtured — the child has a loving, stable relationship with people who provide emotional warmth and help them build a sense of belonging.

Active — the child has opportunities to take part in play, sport, hobbies, and physical activities in ways that build confidence and self-esteem.

Respected — the child's views are listened to and taken seriously in decisions that affect their life.

Responsible — the child is supported to take on age-appropriate roles and responsibilities, developing a sense of agency and community contribution.

Included — the child has access to the support they need, feels part of their family and community, and is not excluded or marginalised.

These eight indicators form the "wheel" — a visual tool often used in assessments and reviews to map a child's current wellbeing across all eight dimensions simultaneously.

How Foster Carers Use SHANARRI

Once you have a child placed with you, SHANARRI becomes the operational language of your conversations with social workers and your contributions to the child's Child's Plan.

In the Child's Plan

Every looked-after child in Scotland has a Child's Plan — the document that records their needs, the actions being taken to address them, and who is responsible for each action. The plan is structured around the SHANARRI indicators. Contributions from you as a foster carer are specifically sought across each indicator — what you're doing to support the child's health, education, emotional development, and participation.

You'll attend Looked After Children (LAC) Reviews at regular intervals where the Child's Plan is updated. Being able to speak concretely about each SHANARRI indicator — with specific examples — is what distinguishes a confident, prepared carer from one who is visibly unsure.

In Day-to-Day Care

SHANARRI gives you a practical framework for noticing and recording what's happening with a child in your care. Rather than a general "he seemed upset this week," you can think in terms of: Is he feeling Safe in the home? Is his Healthy indicator slipping — is he sleeping less, eating poorly? Is he feeling Nurtured — does he have a secure attachment forming with the household?

This language also helps in conversations with the child themselves. The Respected indicator reminds you that a looked-after child has the right to participate in decisions affecting them. Asking a child about their views on a school choice, an activity, or a family contact arrangement isn't just good practice — it's a statutory expectation.

In Foster Carer Reviews

You'll have an annual review of your own approval, conducted by your supervising social worker. Your practice as a carer is evaluated partly through the lens of SHANARRI — how well did you support the child's outcomes across each indicator? Keeping your own reflective notes, structured around the eight indicators, gives you strong material for these reviews.

GIRFEC and The Promise

The Promise — Scotland's commitment to redesigning its care system following the 2020 Independent Care Review — reinforces the GIRFEC ethos. The language of The Promise maps almost exactly onto the SHANARRI indicators: every child should grow up safe, loved, and respected.

For foster carers, The Promise signals a direction of travel. The care system is moving away from procedural management toward genuine relationship-based care. GIRFEC is the mechanism through which this shows up in practice — it asks not just "is this child safe?" but "is this child thriving?"

Common Misconceptions

GIRFEC is not only for children with complex needs. It applies to all children in Scotland. The indicators aren't a severity scale — they're a holistic map. A child who is performing well at school (Achieving) but is struggling socially (Included) needs attention on the weaker indicators regardless of how well the others are going.

The wellbeing wheel is not a scoring tool. It doesn't produce a number. It's a discussion framework. When social workers or panel members ask about a child's wellbeing, they're asking for a nuanced picture across multiple dimensions, not a pass/fail assessment.

GIRFEC doesn't replace specialist assessment. A child who is presenting with significant mental health concerns, learning difficulties, or the effects of trauma needs specialist professional involvement — GIRFEC provides the framework for coordinating that involvement, not a substitute for it.

Preparing for Your First Use of SHANARRI

Before your first placement, it helps to spend time with each indicator and think concretely about what it would look like in practice. What does "Safe" look like in your home? What routines support "Healthy"? How will you actively promote "Respected" with a child who has learned not to expect their views to matter?

The Skills to Foster training covers GIRFEC, but the coverage is necessarily broad. The more time you spend with the SHANARRI indicators before your first placement, the more naturally they'll become part of how you observe and report on the children in your care.

GIRFEC and SHANARRI are the shared language of Scottish foster care. Once they're part of how you think, writing contributions to Child's Plans, attending LAC Reviews, and completing your annual carer review all become significantly more straightforward. The Scotland Fostering Approval Guide includes worked examples of how foster carers report on SHANARRI indicators in practice, alongside the full legislative context for how GIRFEC is embedded in Scottish law.

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