Our staff

With a background in local economic development consultancy, Alex plays a critical role gathering and analysing evidence for the Child Protection Improvement Programme and Addressing Neglect and Enhancing Wellbeing programme. He's the person devising and implementing user-friendly recording systems to illustrate the scale of neglect and child protection and the effectiveness of approaches to tackle these issues. Alex is an advocate for active living - cycling, running, swimming, football - and his passion for sport stimulated his PhD on community stadia.

Amy has a background in children’s residential care, supporting children with ASD and additional support needs. She has worked in the sector for over 10 years and more specifically within learning and development for the last 5 years. Her role at CELCIS is to help coordinate and manage the events that are hosted for workers across the children’s care sector.

Social anthropologist Brandi Lee is a research associate in our Evidence and Innovation Hub. With a background in the youth work sector, she is passionate about working alongside public bodies to use research evidence to inform and improve policy and practice. Her work is driven by children and young people's rights, their experiences of services, and sense of identity and belonging. When not working you'll find her outdoors with her wife and child, either walking in the woods or growing food in their garden.

Carolann has a truly analytical mind. She uses her logical, numerical skills to produce easily accessible data and visuals as baseline to improve systems supporting vulnerable children. Every point on one of her graphs represents a real child, on his or her journey towards a permanent home. Carolann applies her analytical mind and sense of order to everything, including the kitchen sink. Every item on her desk and in her wardrobe is lined up in perfect order, and she simply doesn't do crossed lines on her data charts.

Cat is a Project Coordinator working across different areas of work in CELCIS. She supports programme governance as well as helps to coordinate projects such as the PACE Collaborative, and the CYC-Net 2021 Conference. In her free time Cat enjoys making all sorts at her pottery club.

Working closely with the Admin Team Manager, Claire is responsible for leading the successful delivery of CELCIS' administrative support activities, across the organisation. Managing administrators as part of a dynamic, responsive team, Claire drives forward the continuous improvement of CELCIS' environment and processes in line with the needs of the organisation. Claire is also responsible for the co-ordination of all CELCIS' recruitment activity. When not at CELCIS, Claire enjoys attending gigs, walking her dog and weekends away with friends - especially in the East Neuk.

After a long career spent in children and families social work practice, Claire now plays an important leadership role within the CELCIS Directorate. Claire's principle focus is to make sure that we really know and understand what works best when it comes to supporting looked after and vulnerable children, their families and care leavers. Claire is a champion for this knowledge to be included in legislation, policy and guidance and implemented in support services. Free time is spent with her triplet nieces, going running, and singing in the Rock Choir.

Deborah is a Children’s Services Implementation Consultant at CELCIS. She is a qualified children and families’ social worker with 20 years’ experience of working in child protection and early help and preventative work. Deborah is also an experienced Solihull Approach Trainer. Deborah believes that all children, young people and their families deserve the opportunity to be equal partners in how services that support them are shaped. She also believes that empathy, compassion, valuing each other’s differences and believing in other’s potential should be at the heart of everything we do. When not working, Deborah enjoys squeezing in a bit of running and general exercise, keeping up with friends & family from near, far and wide and listening to anything from early 90’s house anthems to Scottish folk music or Radio 6.

Elaine is CHIP Learning and Development Lead at CELCIS.

Emma is one of the Communications Managers here at CELCIS. She supports colleagues across different areas of work to share what we do through marketing campaigns and a variety of publications, as well as keeping up-to-date with the sector more generally. Outside of work, Emma enjoys keeping active, particularly through martial arts, practicing her German, and spending time with her friends, family, and rescue dog, Winston.

Emma has worked as a speech and language therapist for many years, specialising in autism. She has worked as a Speechie in a range of contexts, from the big blue skies of remote and regional Australia to a vibrant inner city Manchester. More recently, she was involved in the implementation of the Scottish Strategy for Autism, sitting on the National Governance Group. She currently works as part of the Protecting Children Programme team and is enjoying applying Active Implementation methodology to support whole systems change, in order to address neglect and enhance wellbeing. Emma enjoys going for a good stomp and discovering new bands at local venues.

Emma uses the analytical skills she developed as a criminology student in the wide range of large exploratory research projects, and specific service and programme evaluations CELCIS is involved in. She enjoys working alongside all kinds of professionals to evidence and showcase good practice for looked after children and young people. She loves to travel and escapes to foreign lands as much as she can.

George provides admin support for the Improving Care Experiences hub at CELCIS and brings several years of experience in similar roles with the Scottish Government, Perth and Kinross Council and Community Safety Glasgow. He has previously worked in video production and is currently studying a Masters in Film Curation. In his spare time he enjoys reading books, going to the cinema and listening to music.