Our staff

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.

 

 

Working closely with the Admin Team Manager, Claire is responsible for leading the successful delivery of CELCIS' administrative support activities, across the organisation. Managing administrators as part of a dynamic, responsive team, Claire drives forward the continuous improvement of CELCIS' environment and processes in line with the needs of the organisation. Claire is also responsible for the co-ordination of all CELCIS' recruitment activity. When not at CELCIS, Claire enjoys attending gigs, walking her dog and weekends away with friends - especially in the East Neuk.

 

 

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.

 

Katherine is the Policy Implementation Lead at CELCIS.

She has worked in various policy roles in the third and public sector, including with Children in Scotland and Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council (EVOC), alongside a role as the Third Sector Advisor to the Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) team at Scottish Government.

Her background is in youth work, having changed careers after gaining a degree in Immunology. Prior to working in policy, Katherine worked with children and young people in different roles, in particular a project with Barnardo’s to support care experienced young people into employment or further education.

Katherine has a master’s degree in Community Education where she researched care experience and employment opportunities.

When not working, she enjoys anything in the outdoors: going up Munro’s, swimming and going along to a very muddy outside exercise class every week.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

With a background in local economic development consultancy, Alex plays a critical role gathering and analysing evidence for the Child Protection Improvement Programme and Addressing Neglect and Enhancing Wellbeing programme. He's the person devising and implementing user-friendly recording systems to illustrate the scale of neglect and child protection and the effectiveness of approaches to tackle these issues. Alex is an advocate for active living - cycling, running, swimming, football - and his passion for sport stimulated his PhD on community stadia.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Halima has recently taken up the post of Contracts and Compliance Advisor. By way of background, Halima is a qualified solicitor, with a background in litigation. After qualifying from her traineeship, Halima went on to work in private practice before moving In House. Most recently Halima was working as a Lawyer at the Scottish Government before joining CELCIS. Halima is the ‘Go to’ for all things Data Protection/GDPR and Contracts. Outside of work Halima is a keen sewist, designing and sewing a range of clothes and accessories.

 

 

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.

 

George provides admin support for the Improving Care Experiences hub at CELCIS and brings several years of experience in similar roles with the Scottish Government, Perth and Kinross Council and Community Safety Glasgow. He has previously worked in video production and is currently studying a Masters in Film Curation. In his spare time he enjoys reading books, going to the cinema and listening to music.

 

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.

 

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.