Our staff

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Working closely with members of the Strategic Management Team, Laura provides the all-important PA and administrative support required to keep the team running smoothly. 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. As a new mum Laura spends her free time with her family and friends.

Kirsty is CELCIS' resident legal eagle. She comes from a local authority and government background where she specialised in looked after children, child protection, and permanence, both in practice and in policy. She helped to deliver, and latterly led on, the PACE Programme which supported Councils and their partners to make improvements to the processes they use to secure permanent homes for looked after children. She was also part of the CELCIS team that produced the 'Staying Together and Connected' guidance to support the rights of brothers and sisters for the Scottish Government. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Joe comes to CELCIS with a background of almost 30 years in local authority work with children, young people and families, including youth work, groupwork, child protection practice and training. He is particularly interested in supporting the development of best practice in child protection and safeguarding and use of evidence and innovation to achieve positive change. A keen music fan and gig goer who also enjoys playing guitar and gigging himself, as well as exploring the great outdoors – when the Scottish weather permits!

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.

After completing a PhD in Statistics, Joanna spent several years working with children and young people in a community outreach setting. She is now marrying these two interests through her role as a Data Analyst at CELCIS, where she is primarily focused on researching outcomes for children and young people growing up in kinship care. Outside of work, Joanna is happiest when riding her bike, climbing a hill or splashing in puddles with her little ones.

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.