Our staff

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Mihaela came to work in Scotland via her homeland of Romania, and Vienna, and she brings a decade's experience working on policy and research projects with Save the Children and the Agency for Fundamental Rights. At CELCIS she will support the Neglect Programme by developing effective data and empirical evidence systems to measure progress. She's been blown away by the friendliness of Glaswegians, and cant wait to explore more of Scotland, but she won't be inviting new friends for dinner - she literally can't boil an egg.

 

 

Robert is a psychology turned legal researcher. He provides evaluation and research to the Permanence and Care Team, as well as working on other social research projects for CELCIS. Due to defend his PhD in law soon, Robert enjoys doing applied research in environments with a real-world impact. Outside of work, Robert runs the Bantuan Coffee Foundation.

 

Leanne comes from a background in education and health services research and evaluation. She was awarded the PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2016, for her research on educational farm visits for primary school children. Leanne is part of the Evidence and Innovation Hub at CELCIS. Outside of work, she enjoys attending gigs and science fiction conventions, and often travels around the UK for these.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

Using principles of co-production to engage people in service design has been a focus of Paul's work across a number of roles, including at the Life Changes Trust, the Prince's Trust, and RBS. At CELCIS, Paul promotes the use of child-centred co-production, participation and engagement work across the sector and internally, and helps to maintain valuable stakeholder relationships. Outside of work Paul enjoys helping people get into music and creativity, despite having no musical talent of his own to speak of!