A multi-agency approach to health and social care support and services from young adulthood to end of life care.
GIRFE is Scotland’s approach to designing and delivering public services that focus on people’s needs. It makes sure services work well for everyone who uses them.
The GIRFE approach was developed to improve how health and social care support is delivered for people in Scotland.
This followed user research which found that many people accessing health and social care were frustrated by:
The approach was co-designed with service users and professionals from nine health and social care areas. It focuses on the individual, ensuring all professionals involved in their care work together to create a package of support that meets all of their life needs.
Using the GIRFE approach:
The principles were developed for all professionals to use:
Within these principles, ‘I’ or ‘me’ can be substituted to include the addition of ‘my guardian’ or ‘my power of attorney’ where relevant.
The Getting It Right For Everyone (GIRFE) Toolkit is a guide that shows you how to embed the principles into practice.
You can use this toolkit in order, or you can select the sections you need to support the person you are helping.
The most important thing is to always involve the person you are supporting (or someone who helps them make decisions) in what happens with their care and support. Doing this, and bringing different experts together around the person, will create the best support plan. This plan will support the whole person and help them live their life as fully and happily as possible.
There are 10 different tools in this kit, and each one focuses on a different part of the support plan. You can change these tools to fit the needs of your local area, as long as they still follow the main ideas of GIRFE.