Our staff

Jenna-Marie has a background in psychology, health research and education who enjoys working in applied research settings. In the past this has included the implementation of health and wellbeing interventions and evaluation of research in general practice and primary care settings, suicide prevention, and childhood attachment studies. She is a qualified primary teacher who joins CELCIS to support children and young people’s experiences of the Children's Hearings Scotland. She is also one human’s Mum and one Labrador’s human, who enjoys coffee, reading and spending time with family and friends.

 

Having spent over twenty years working for national newspapers, I now work in the CELCIS Comms department, looking after the website, social media and producing digital content.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

Kirsty is CELCIS' resident legal eagle. She comes from a local authority and government background where she specialised in looked after children and permanence, both in practice and in policy. She is helping to deliver the PACE Programme which supports Councils and their partners to make improvements to the processes they use to secure permanent homes for looked after children. A big am dram fan, Kirsty's appeared on stage in the Edinburgh Festival and in musicals. She can act and sing a wee bit, but says please don't ask her to dance.

 

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.

 

Laura provides the all-important administrative support required to keep CELCIS's Improving Care Experiences team ticking over smoothly. Laura also co-ordinates the running of the Scottish Journal Residential Child Care. 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. In her spare time, Laura enjoys her holidays in the sun and spending much needed social time with her family and friends.

 

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.

 

Lesley is all things comms at CELCIS. She's our brand advisor, puts together our marketing campaigns, and writes content for our own Reach magazine and other publications. As well as broadcasting our great work to the outside world and to our own staff, Lesley also keeps CELCIS up to speed with developments in the sector.

 

As a social worker, family support manager and team leader, Linda is passionate about the practical application of child development and early year's research in supporting our understanding and decision making for children. Linda loves gardening, growing her own food and making preserves to share with family and friends.

 

Linda has worked in children's services for many years, having worked in both social work and education. The focus of her work has always been about supporting young people and their families to enjoy and benefit from the best educational experiences possible. She's particularly interested in building understanding within schools about how to work well with parents. Away from work, Linda sings and skis, occasionally at the same time, and just loves blustery days at the beach with her niece.

 

Based in the Improving Protection and Permanence Team, Lisa provides the all-important admin support required to keep CELCIS's Protecting Children Team ticking over smoothly. Lisa is also the Secretariat Support for Child Protection Committees Scotland. Despite her youth, Lisa's a Strathclyde University veteran, going all the way from apprenticeship to ILM leadership training and likes to say that she's a leader-in-waiting. As a plate-spinning working mum, free time is scarce, but Lisa likes to let her hair down whenever opportunity arises.

 

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.

 

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.