“It’s about…believing our own words”: Bringing together the voices of care experienced people

Rebekah Pierre is a care experienced writer, author, social worker, and editor of a new anthology, ‘Free Loaves on Fridays: The Care System As Told By People Who Actually Get It’, which brings together stories, essays, poems and letters by 100 care experienced children and adults. In this conversation with CELCIS, she discusses the process of developing this anthology and how she hopes the book will help shift the narrative of care experience.

Data poses questions as well as answers, so what questions arise from Scotland's Child Protection 2021-2022 Statistics?

Dr Alex McTier, Evidence and Evaluation Specialist at CELCIS, takes a closer look at Scotland’s Child Protection 2021-2022 Statistics to uncover what the statistics tell us about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and longer-term trends.

The future of social work in times of change

Kathryn Lindsay is the Director of Children, Families and Justice Services and Chief Social Work Officer at Angus Council. In this blog post, she discusses how social workers can use their voices and experience to drive and adapt to change and support each other.

World Social Work Day 2023: How social work teams in East Lothian have promoted staff wellbeing and development

On this World Social Work Day, Rogan Higginbottom, a senior workforce learning and development officer at East Lothian Council (ELC), shares how social work teams have supported staff wellbeing and development following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the face of ongoing recruitment and retention challenges.

Grappling with the implications of The Promise for teaching social work in Scotland

Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh, Professor Ruth Emond and Dr Helen Whincup draw on their experiences in teaching Social Work students to consider how The Promise should be incorporated into courses to ensure that new social work practitioners are equipped with the knowledge and skills to understand and support the changes The Promise calls for.

World Social Work Day 2022: the experiences of social workers during COVID-19

On this World Social Work Day, two social workers from East Ayrshire Council, in Scotland, share their thoughts and experiences of the impact of the pandemic on social work practice.

Walking in Fred’s shoes

Alison Cowper, Service Manager with the Independent Care and Review Team (Children and Families) at Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership talks about how ‘what does this mean for Fred?’ influenced their work with CELCIS when process mapping their current system.

More than a promise: the imperative to make change happen

Claire Burns, Director (Acting), CELCIS – Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection, marks the first anniversary of The Promise.

Data matters: the role of Minimum Datasets in improving child protection processes

Jo Cochrane is the Children’s Services Development and Assurance Team Manager at Dumfries and Galloway Council, since retired. Since 2018, CELCIS has been working alongside local public sector partnerships in Dumfries and Galloway, Falkirk, and East and Midlothian, to develop a Minimum Dataset for use across all 30 of Scotland’s Child Protection Committees.

Finding the ‘invisible’ adopters

Pride month 2020 was a bit different from previous years. The restrictions in place in various ways around the world to address the ongoing coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic meant that many of the usual parties, parades, and protests were cancelled, postponed, or moved online. One constant however was the opportunity to reflect on how far the LGBT+ community has come – and importantly, how far there is still to go.