Dear Mums, Dads and Carers

Welcome to the Saint Joseph’s School community

We are delighted to welcome you and your family into our caring, nurturing environment where we can work together, aiming to do the best we can for your children. We will share all the necessary information to make you and your child’s start in Nursery (Early Learning & Childcare) as smooth and as easy as possible.

Up until now, you have worked with Health Visitors in the development of your child. In this partnership, you may have heard of an important piece of legislation – the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, or more commonly known as the GIRFEC Approach.

Continuing from the work of the Health Visitor, Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools also work within, and often together, in this approach.

What is GIRFEC?

GIRFEC stands for ‘Getting It Right For Every Child’. It is the Scottish Government-led approach, based on the United Nations Convention for Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It aims to make sure that our children and young people – and their parents or carers – can get all the help and support they need from birth right through to age 18.

The wellbeing of children and young people is at the heart of the GIRFEC approach. Wellbeing is about how things are going for children in their lives. The GIRFEC approach uses eight words to describe what it looks like when things are going well – in other words whether a child is getting realised, the rights of being:

  • Safe

  • Healthy

  • Achieving

  • Nurtured

  • Active

  • Respected

  • Responsible

  • Included

These words can be used to find out where a child’s strengths lie and also, if there are concerns, to see where some advice, help or support might be needed. They help everyone to understand wellbeing in the same way, and use the same language to talk about it. You can expect to hear wellbeing referred to when your child’s health visitor or school contacts you.

These wellbeing words are often known as the SHANARRI indicators and illustrated in the SHANARRI wheel, which you may see dotted around the school and medical centres.


In addition to the induction visits and other presentation information, we hope that this webiste will be a useful tool for you to refer to, leading up to your child starting with us for the nursery years. If you feel you require any further information at any point, please contact Mrs Fowler at the school on the above phone numbers and email address or ask a member of our nursery or office teams.

Finally, thank you very much for your continued support in your child starting nursery and welcome to the team!

Yours sincerely ,

Mrs S Lindsay Mrs O Fowler Miss P Iwasziewicz

(HT) (DHT) (SEYP)