Our staff

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.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

Moyra worked for many years as a social worker, residential practitioner and manager, and in therapeutic work with traumatised children and their families. Her research interests include using creative approaches to hear the voices of disabled and looked after children. Since 2005, Moyra has worked along with survivors of institutional abuse and other stakeholders to develop and implement An Action Plan on Justice for Victims of Historical Abuse of Children in Care. In 2018 she gained a PhD on exploring the narratives of survivors of historical institutional abuse. More recently she has worked as a music therapist, and is the CELCIS songbird. Moyra enjoys tap dancing, music, gardening and backpacking.

 

Sharon joined the CELCIS redress team as a Research Associate to work on the consultation with victims and survivors of historic child abuse in Scotland. Previously, she worked on various university and NHS funded research projects, and on research connected with the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry to help chart the development of care services in Scotland between 1900 and 2014. Sharon is also a graduate member of the British Psychological Society with an interest in the psychology of coaching. In her spare time, Sharon can often be found on the side-lines watching her son and husband playing rugby or supporting her national side at Murrayfield or on TV!

 

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.

 

Michael Bettencourt has over 15 years’ experience working with Virtual School Heads and care experienced education services. He is leading on the support and development of Virtual Schools and Care Experienced Teams in Scotland. Michael was previously Research Lead and a Trustee of NAVSH (National Association of Virtual School Heads). He also led on PALAC a knowledge exchange programme at the Institute of Education, UCL. PALAC supported schools and local authorities to implement evidence based interventions in their settings.

 

 

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.

 

To Come

 

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.

 

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.

 

As a trained social worker who spent many years in children and families services, Marian brings an interdisciplinary approach to her health and wellbeing work for CELCIS. She is especially keen to encourage thinking which recognises the whole child and the interconnectedness of health with a child's other needs. In her partnership work with practitioners and managers, she works towards a collective understanding of how early trauma can affect children, and their ability to learn, grow and thrive through a process of repair and recovery.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

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.