Our staff

Laura joins CELCIS from working as a social worker at Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, and has 12 years’ experience working in children and families and fostering and adoption services. She also has experience of supporting families in a community addiction team.

 

 

Working closely with members of the Strategic Management Team, Laura provides the all-important PA and administrative support required to keep the team running smoothly. Laura first joined the Strathclyde family at the age of 16 as a Modern Apprentice and since then has completed an SVQ level 4 in Business and Administration and ILM level 3 in Leadership and Management. As a new mum Laura spends her free time with her family and friends.

 

Lynsey is admin for Professional Development Services and works to assist with international projects and provide support for the many learning and development opportunities available at CELCIS. She brings her experience from her various administration roles in the education sector which has developed an appreciation of lifelong learning. Away from work, Lynsey is happiest when spending time with her family and friends.

 

With a PhD in applied anthropology and a Masters in Social Work, along with a background in child protection social work and youth justice, Melissa brings her passion for the science and practice of implementation and systems improvement from the USA to Scotland in 2015. She continues to be inspired by Scotland's progressive vision for addressing the unmet needs of children and families and is excited to be building a team of implementation specialists at CELCIS to support local areas to address neglect and enhance wellbeing and to fully and effectively implement GIRFEC.

 

Larissa Gordon has over 7 years' experience as a Virtual School Head Teacher and was the first in Scotland. Prior to becoming a Virtual School Head, Larissa worked as a senior leader in secondary education and has over 20 years experience in the sector. She is supporting the development of the Virtual School Network hosted and facilitated by CELCIS, by providing insight both operationally and strategically.

 

Sarah is a former Academic Skills Lecturer and Academic Advisor who discovered a passion for online education. She oversees and promotes our online learning options on offer, options which include our unique distance learning 'MSc in Child and Youth Care Studies', our 'Caring for Vulnerable Children' MOOC, and our many learning opportunities for the sector. Sarah moved to Scotland from Australia in 2014 and loves the cool weather and beautiful scenery.

 

Michelle is one half of the CELCIS events team. Her main role is to coordinate and manage our events, seminar and conference programme. Michelle helps us deliver informative, relevant and creative events for anything from 40-400 delegates, covering a wide range of specialist themes for all of those people working in the looked after children's sector. Michelle has an extensive shoe collection, loves a good book, a good chat and good times with her family.

 

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.

 

Lorraine's been a registered social worker for 25 years, and still is. She's always worked with children and families, either in social work or learning and development settings. She remains a huge fan of the potential power of group work to bring out individual and collective strengths, and for solving problems. A dedicated gig-goer and music lover, Lorraine prefers small, sweaty and sticky-floored venues over gigantic arenas, but she'll go to see her all-time favourite band Admiral Fallow any time, any place.

 

 

 

In her role on the senior management team Kathleen takes a 360' view of CELCIS's work. Her focus is all about supporting strategic and successful delivery of CELCIS's work with its partners, by assessing how that work is communicated and implemented. Kathleen brings long experience in knowledge and information exchange and remains passionate about how evidence is best used in practice. She's a self-confessed yoga fanatic, its what she does to stay sane and balanced. A trained dancer, she occasionally finds time to trip the light fantastic.

 

To Come

 

Throughout Steven's career he has worked in organisations that support children and young people to improve their experiences and life opportunities. At CELCIS, he leads business development, financial planning and HR to ensure effective and efficient delivery of all of our services. As a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, and former graphic designer, Steven combines practical and creative approaches to problem solving. Steven also delivers inputs as a guest speaker on Leading Change, including partnerships with HR, at other UK Universities.

 

Joanne is a qualified children and families' social worker with 25 years' experience in a wide range of local authority, voluntary and policy roles. Joanne heads up the Improving Care Experiences team at CELCIS which has a particular focus on core practice, assessment, planning and review for our looked after children. Joanne believes if you care, support, and carefully challenge people you will get the absolute best from them. Her growth and nurture agenda extends to the care she bestows on her beloved garden.

 

Katie has a great head for numbers. She keeps CELCIS right on the money with important financial, HR and contractual stuff. One of her most critical roles is to keep the staff up to speed with the dreaded Financial Management System. After bringing up five children, Katie has finally found some time for herself and uses it mainly for yoga and running. She's already completed the Berlin Half Marathon and is hatching plans to add swimming to her impressive activity repertoire.

 

Sandy is our bookkeeper in chief, she manages the money and is responsible for all things financial for us. She is in charge of our day-to-day transactions and ensures these are dealt with promptly, and in line with our Scottish Government funding objectives. She also manages income generated from our services and keeps a close eye on our expenditure column.

 

 

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.