Our staff

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Being passionate about the use of evidence in policy and practice, Fiona's focus is to explore and support how we as an organisation use evidence in its own practice and to evaluate the effectiveness of our work. She leads the research team to work closely with colleagues and partners to generate learning about how we can improve and to be accountable for the impact that we have. Away from work Fiona is a keen cyclist and is often to be found touring the length and breadth of the UK.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Nicola brings years of experience to her PA role from early days working in London, for the NHS in Scotland and the HSE in Ireland. She's known to family, friends and colleagues as 'Organised Baxter' for good reason. As PA to the 6-strong CELCIS management team, Nicola keeps them ticking over like a well-oiled machine, and leaves them in no doubt who's really in charge. As a yoga teacher and practitioner, Nicola runs two classes a week, including one at CELCIS where she helps fellow colleagues benefit from a beginner's practise.

 

Kenny works with corporate parents and other partners at local authority and national levels to provide bespoke consultancy, training and expert support to improve services and outcomes for care leavers, He's passionate about closing the implementation gap between policy and practice, and offers a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience gained over many years as a practitioner, manager and trainer. Away from work, he's equally passionate about hitting golf balls, watching rugby and strumming guitars.

 

Estelle has over 20 years experience in children and families social work, working in operations and strategy with a main focus on child protection. She uses this knowledge, alongside her skills and sensitivity to lead CELCIS's Historical Child Abuse work and to support external organisations through our consultation services. Alongside a range of national stakeholders which includes survivors, government, Scottish human rights and service providers, Estelle is involved in the Scottish survivor journey towards redress and reparation. Estelle loves spending time with family and friends. She admits that she is much better talking about plans to exercise rather than actually seeing them through.

 

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.

 

As the Improving Care Experiences team's policy person, Lizzie plays a proactive role supporting CELCIS to influence, shape and set policy to ensure that the needs of looked after and vulnerable children are included where appropriate. Her special area of expertise is Corporate Parenting legislation, an area which complements her background in children and families social work, and work with homeless women. Lizzie lives in a menagerie of dog, cat and husband, and her favourite part of the day is coming home to her hubby's fantastic food.

 

Once upon a time Nyree supervised over 200 call centre staff. She brings all that experience (and more) to managing the CELCIS admin team, and is a great champion of their critical function. Nyree leads the front-facing responsibilities of her team by example, and makes sure new recruits are positively embedded in the CELCIS culture right from the start. Every spare hour is spent on her own grand design - she and her family are working their way through a major house renovation.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.