What We Do
The Scottish Child Law Centre is the only specialist hub advising all ages of children and across all areas of child-related Scots law.
We empower children, families and professionals with the law, reaching those who most need our support. All emails are answered by qualified solicitors and our advice is child-centred. The Centre also provides specialist training to help our partners better advocate for the rights of the child. We also work with the Scottish Government and other partners to improve child law in Scotland
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Free Legal Advice
You can complete our enquiry form to receive free and confidential legal advice. This will help you understand how the law supports children’s rights in lots of different life situations.
We’re here to help all ages of children and young people, as well as parents, carers, family members and professionals who work with or for children.
Our qualified solicitors can answer any question you may have relating to all areas of child-related Scots law. This includes education, additional support needs, health, residence, contact, youth offending, accessing records, confidentiality, children’s rights, children’s hearings and disputes involving the court.
Training
We are a recognised leader of specialist training on children’s rights and the law as it affects children in Scotland.
Our training courses take into account updates in the law and are delivered by our solicitors.
We provide bespoke training packages and masterclasses to upskill professionals. We also facilitate engaging child law and rights respecting workshops for schools and youth groups.
Community Advice Clinics
We are working to deliver free advice clinics in the heart of communities to help remove the barriers that many children and families face in accessing advice and justice.
This follows a six week pilot clinic in Glasgow’s Govanhill in 2022, where multiple breaches of rights were identified. The complexity and urgency of the cases also highlighted the lack of any previous legal aid.
In response, we want to roll out more free and in person support in familiar partner provider settings. Our engagement team are currently working with local people and organisations in Govanhill to co-design clinics and we hope that funding will be secured to make these and other clinics possible.
Our community advice clinic packages can also include specialist training to help upskill the staff of our partner providers to ensure sustainable support for children and families.
If you are interested in co-hosting a clinic, please get in touch.
Young Investigators
To celebrate the incorporation of children’s rights into Scots’ law, we established a National Young Investigators Group.
The Young Investigators met to learn about how the law supports their rights in different life situations, and to shape our services to reach more young people.
Our engagement team supported this growing work and a diversity of young investigators joined from across Scotland.
This project has ended but we continue to work with young people through school workshops and are planning more co-produced projects.
Influencing Change
We use the evidence gained from our direct engagement with children, and those who care and support them, to positively influence policy and the long term change needed to improve lives.
We work with the Scottish Government and other partners across different working groups to advise on policy and legislation.
Our expertise is increasingly recognised as the UNCRC is incorporated into Scots law.
Our Vision
For all children and young people growing up in Scotland to have their rights respected, protected, and fulfilled.
Our Team
Sarah Forster, Director
Sarah studied law at Edinburgh and Nottingham and enjoyed an Erasmus year studying in Paris. She is passionate about empowering and supporting people to improve their lives and has a background in transformational change. She has worked across the public and third sector to deliver long-term strategic change in complex areas such as substance misuse, homelessness and health and social care, always being led by people with lived experience.
She is now leading the team at the SCLC to ensure that children’s rights are made real through providing national equitable access to legal advice, irrespective of a person’s age, background, ethnicity, disability, or income. Happiest spending time outdoors. Sarah can often be found swimming in lochs and having BBQs on the beach.
Denise Chalmers, Administrator
Denise has more than 35 years of experience working in the private and public sectors. She’s worked at the Centre for over six years and continues to enjoy the work.
She has two teenage daughters and two miniature schnauzer called Bailey and Rosie. At the weekends, you can find her at her static caravan in Pitlochry, where she enjoys walking in the beautiful countryside.
Jamie Speirs, Senior Solicitor
Jamie has experience working in both small and mid-sized law firms specialising in family law and legal aid. During her work in private practice Jamie represented clients from diverse backgrounds at Sheriff Courts across Scotland and took a particular interest in child contact and residence cases.
Jamie is passionate about children’s rights and making justice more accessible to children and young people from all backgrounds. She firmly believes in empowering children and young people to have their views heard on decisions that affect them. Prior to taking up her post with the SCLC she was a volunteer solicitor with the organisation.
Jamie is also an avid runner, keen history buff and enjoys travelling in her spare time.
Joanne Krus, Communications and Engagement Officer
Joanne has five years of communications experience as a journalist and working with NGOs and charities. She has previously worked for NGOs that support asylum seekers and refugees across Europe. Her work has focused on advocating for people’s rights to create a more just and humane society.
As communications officer, she ensures that violations of people’s rights don’t go unheard by raising awareness and educating people about their rights.
When the weather allows, Joanne enjoys hiking in the Scottish highlands
Our Board
Stewart Maclachlan, Chair
Stewart MacLachlan joined the board in August 2018. He is Legal and Policy Manager for the Migrant Children’s Project, part of Coram Children’s Legal Centre. He manages the legal training programme, as well as specific funded projects. He leads on a number of policy areas at the Centre, including asylum, trafficking/modern slavery and access to education. He is co-author of Seeking Support (fifth edition), a guide to working with separated children and young people.
Stewart is a practising Scottish solicitor, qualifying in 2010, and was accredited as a Level Two Supervisor under the Immigration and Asylum Accreditation Scheme in England. He previously worked at an immigration firm in Nottingham and worked for over four years in law centres in Scotland. In Scotland he regularly advised and represented on issues including child law, education law, immigration law, and care law.
Jennifer Law, Treasurer
Jenny is a Finance Manager at the Church of Scotland. After graduating from University of St Andrews in 2005 with an honours degree in Pure Mathematics, Jenny worked as an Accounts Assistant for a year before progressing on to her CA training.
Qualifying as a CA in 2009, Jenny then spent the next 12 years focussing on audit and accounting within the charitable and not-for-profit sectors, developing her expertise in respect to technical compliance with charity accounting regulations. In 2021 Jenny left professional practice to join the finance team at one of Scotland’s largest charities.
Hannah Gray
Hannah worked at Enquire – the Scottish advice service for additional support for learning for over 8 years. She has worked for the Scottish Government in Education Policy and with a charity as an Employment Support Worker. She has a degree in Anthropology from the University of Aberdeen.
Growing up as a child with complex health conditions and spending her childhood in hospital Hannah is passionate about ensuring children’s and young people’s voices are heard in decisions that impact them. For a number of years she was chair of the Young People’s Advisory Group for Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital.
Currently Hannah is taking a career break to learn Spanish. She is also Trustee for The Scottish Centre for Motor Impairment (The Craighalbert Centre).
Nicola Gilchrist
Nicola is a practising advocate specialising in family and child law. Her expertise in child law encompasses all of its many facets, including complex jurisdictional issues, international child abduction, permanence orders and petitions for adoption. She has a particular interest in cases that involve sensitive cross-cultural issues, domestic abuse and matters affecting women and girls. Nicola presently holds a commission as an Advocate Depute where she prosecutes serious crime in Scotland. Nicola is committed to ensuring that the experience of children and young people involved in the legal system is as positive as possible. Nicola is committed to mentoring, and she has a wealth of experience as a trustee.
Rachael MacDonald
Rachael is accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a Specialist in Family Law and is a Partner in the Family Law Team at Macnabs LLP. She has experience in all aspects of family and child law and appears regularly in the Sheriff Court. Rachael is Treasurer and a Committee member of the Family Law Association, a member of Consensus Collaboration Scotland and a tutor on the Undergraduate Family Law LLB Course at the University of Edinburgh. She also sits on Netball Scotland’s Wellbeing and Protection Panel. Rachael was a volunteer solicitor at the Centre for three years until 2018 when she joined the Board.
Sarah Drummond
Sarah qualified as a lawyer in 2010 and initially practised as an employment lawyer for a large commercial law firm, specialising in a variety of employment-related disputes, advisory work and training.
Since 2015, Sarah has worked in-house for a Royal Chartered professional regulatory body and in this role deals with a variety of legal issues from contractual work, dispute resolution to governance matters. Sarah is also a non-executive director on the Board of the Pensions Management Institute.
Christian Jetuah
Christian is a programme manager specialising in operational resilience and operational continuity in large financial services organisations. Since 2013 he has worked in a variety of firms such as; Goldman Sachs, as a management consultant, RBS, Deutsche Bank, to the NHS and a startup charity, and is currently with abrdn. His focus has been on leading programme teams to deliver projects and programmes and operating model implementation.
Between 2005 and 2013 Christian served in the British Army as an Infantry Officer, with 1st Battalion The Rifles, serving on three tours of Afghanistan. Christian is now a reservist with 6th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
Christian is also a trustee with the Lothian Veterans Centre in Dalkeith and sits on the board of directors of the Royal Scots Club in Edinburgh.
Christian has a keen interest in how adopted children and their families and children of service members can be better supported.
Thank you very much, you have really relaxed me. I have limited English and didn’t know where to turn. I have been phoning around solicitors who are all saying they can’t help me. No one was speaking to me. Thank you very, very much.
Last year we gave free legal advice to thousands of people through our adviceline.
Support SCLC
There are lots of ways that you can support the Scottish Child Law Centre. This includes volunteering, working with us on a partnership project, making a donation, fundraising and becoming a member.