Connections between Named Persons, GIRFEC and ACEs

. WALES

 
SCOTLAND

Sir Harry Burns, Professor of Global Public Health, University of Strathclyde, speaking at a conference: 

"I`m just thinking that there`s a lot of good practice in terms of `Getting it Right for Every Child`and you know working together in Scotland - definitely not starting from nothing in this - those are things happening. But I think that what sometimes happens is all these different agencies are working in silos and we`re doing things, and we`re duplicating what we`re doing, and we had a really interesting meeting with some mental health services and early intervention last week. And they were looking at our training and education and showing us what they were doing in early intervention and they were going into schools and doing some stuff about trauma informed work and we were going into schools and doing stuff about nurturing approaches and we were really having a conversation about the duplication of some of the work that`s going on and I think that in this time of challenging ...resources and how we work together you need to talk to each other more about what we`re doing and I think what`s exciting about ACEs is it`s allowing us that opportunity."

[that is, an opportunity to network and pool resources with a Common Purpose.]

"Because we`re calling it something in education; and social work are calling it something; and health are calling it something else. We need to come together and have a shared language and I`m really excited that this day has been planned alongside Education and Health to develop that shared language so we`re not all going around doing the same thing and duplicating our efforts. And I really hope that is something we can become better at through these conversations."

[i.e. joined up working, joined up data, the total view of the citizen]

A question from the audience: "I`m just wondering what the panel think about taking our youth and engaging them in this whole process. I recently staged a Resilience screening where some young people came and they were really excited afterwards about wanting to take this to young people and to have a screening for young people and their ideas were things like, this could really stop bullying and I was really sort of taken by it and thought, how can we engage our youth? I think of a Ted Talk by someone called George who was a NASA scientist who speaks about how our creativity decreases as we get older. So can we engage the most creative in our communities and get this message out to them? And I wonder what the panel thinks about how we can do that safely without possibly retraumatising. Thank you." 

Harry Burns: "I think that`s absolutely right. Again to come back to the point Alison made. This is not another thing. You know, we`ve had things, you know GIRFEC is a thing and people have responsibilities for delivering that."

[There is no indication from Professor Harry Burns how that may be delivered without also delivering the data gathering `named person`, the person with responsibility, an essential component of GIRFEC which was rejected by the Supreme Court]

"This is about culture. This is about context in our society and it`s a place based thing as much as anything else. So it`s not about a particular department or a particular person that has responsibility for this; this is something that should be second nature to us all, to support people who can`t look after themselves."

[i.e. Essentially he is arguing that all departments should work together, GIRFEC-style, to support people with or without their consent]

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The UNITED STATES points to the underlying thinking behind ACEs which has to do with public/private partnerships and investment opportunities. 

"The evolving realization that investment in prevention results in savings to government has introduced novel private financing strategies for established interventions with predictable outcomes..."

"These emerging financing strategies move human service systems upstream to reduce disease burden and enhance well-being and productivity. By understanding the relationship between interventions, ACEs, and changes in behavioral and general health outcomes as well as overall measures of productivity, a coherent strategy can be developed to coordinate financing, maximize return on investment, and ultimately reduce ACEs and promote health." 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876285917301493
Not without the data, of course.