Leading the way: From experience to empowerment

In the National Year of Reading 2026, and as part of Care Experienced Week in Scotland and National Care Leavers' Month in the UK, Georgia Barrow, from the Reading Heroes team at The Reader, reflects on what empowerment looks like through the lens of Shared Reading. Georgia explores how stories, relationships and the experience of feeling heard can help care experienced children build confidence, connection and a sense of possibility.

There's something fishy here

In this blog post for Care Experienced Week, Adam Bennett, Founder and CEO of ProjectChange, shares the thinking behind his recently published opinion piece ‘Please Pass the Smoked Salmon’ which challenges assumptions about care experienced young people and argues for greater trust, autonomy and dignity in how support is provided.

How best to navigate the new roadmap?

With the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026 now in place, CELCIS consultant with lived experience Gordon Drennan argues that listening to lived experience and resourcing the changes intended will be essential to implementing the new legislation

One Hundred Voices: Making real change means really listening

As a new installation on the care system in Scotland tours the nation, Nicola McCartney, lead artist on the National Theatre of Scotland’s Caring Scotland project, reflects on the importance of listening to and learning from people with care experience if The Promise of Scotland's Independent Care Review is to become a reality.

Connected By Care: The joy of taking part

In this blog post for Care Day 2026, Craig McCreadie, Participation Practice Lead at CELCIS, reflects on his passion for supporting people with care experience and creating spaces for people to take part and have important conversations.

How do we define care? Bridging cultural gaps in developing a universal definition of care experience

In this blog post for Care Experienced Week, Maryam, who was a CELCIS Consultant with lived experience of care involved in considering the Scottish Government's consultation earlier this year on creating a universal definition of care experience, shares her thoughts on the need to better understand the cultural nuances of people living in Scotland from the Global South.

How the Scottish Child Interview Model is improving experiences for children and young people

The Scottish Child Interview Model is a new model of practice for interviewing children who are victims or witnesses of crime, abuse, neglect or exploitation and is intended to bring about real improvements in children’s experiences that go beyond the interview itself. In this blog post, Jennifer Morrison, Social Work Project Lead on Scotland’s National Joint Investigative Interviewing Team, discusses how social workers have enhanced their knowledge and skills to use this new model in practice.

My port in a storm – the relationship that helped to shape who I am today

In this blog post for Care Day 2025, Beth-Anne McDowall, a CELCIS Consultant with lived experience, discusses the power of long-lasting relationships and the feeling of safety these bring.

Whose experiences are we relying on to explain what the reality of adoption feels like for adoptees?

In this blog post, Dr Polly Cowan, a Practice Manager at Scottish Adoption and Fostering, explains how the organisation’s Young Ambassadors developed a new podcast – We Talk Adoption and Fostering – to highlight the experiences of their generation.

Challenging the narrative: How a new media toolkit is helping tell the stories of care

Sophia Alexandra Hall is deputy digital editor at the Big Issue and the author of the Media Toolkit for Journalists and Care Experienced People, which shares advice with journalists on how they can positively empower and engage care experienced interviewees in the UK. It also includes advice for care experienced people, on how to protect themselves and their life stories when working with the media. In this blog post during Care Experienced Week, Sophia shares the story of how this toolkit came to be, and why she feels she was the right person to write it.