Staff,Board and Patrons

Our Staff

Morag Driscoll (Director)

Morag is a qualified solicitor with a background in family law practice and representing children and has been a Reporter to the Children's Hearing. Morag has been a member of the Council of the Law Society of Scotland and is currently Convenor of their Family Law Committee.

Iris Quar (Solicitor)

Iris is a qualified solicitor with a background in family law practice and extensive experience in advising on child law issues.  Iris is a Trustee and member of the management committee of the Still Birth and Neonatal Death Society Lothians (SANDS) an organisation which supports the bereaved families of stillborn babies and babies who die shortly after their birth.

Evelyn Hay (Office Manager)

Evelyn is the Office Manager at the Scottish Child Law Centre.  She has over 20 year’s experience of working in the voluntary sector and has a particular interest in supporting work with children and young people.

Stewart Maclachlan (Solicitor - Part Time)

Stewart is a qualified solicitor who has previously worked in private practice in litigation, family and education law. He has experience advising on child law issues. Stewart takes the lead on advice to the 'Take Note' Service. 

Paul Taylor (Trainee Solicitor)

Paul has recently graduated in law from the University of Edinburgh and is very interested in child/family law. Paul has a natural enthusiasm for this area of law and is looking forward to working with the rest of the SCLC team.

Emma-Jane Harrington (Administrative Assistant - Part Time)

Emma-Jane has over 10 year's experience working in administration and is particularly interested in supporting the work of charities. Emma-Jane also has a background in photography and web design and is employed as part of the 'Take Note' Project.

Our Board

Maggie Mellon (Chair)

Maggie took up the chair of the SCLC in July 2009, having served on the Board for the previous five years.  Maggie is a qualified social worker, with a research based Masters Degree and Advanced Diploma in Child Protection. Previously Director of Children and Family Services with Children 1st, and prior to that Head of Public Policy with NCH Scotland (now Action for Children Scotland),  Maggie has worked in both statutory and voluntary sectors in Scotland and in London, and has significant experience of work in the children's hearing system in Scotland and the juvenile and family courts in England.

Maggie is a non Executive Director of the Board of NHS Health Scotland, the Scotland wide health promotion body. She is also an external examiner for the OU Social Work course.

Maggie is now independent, and the Director of her own company, working with Local Authorities and the Voluntary sector. She writes on social policy and social work issues and speaks regularly at conferences and seminars, particularly on the issues  of children and family rights, child care and child protection policy and practice. 

Gillian Donald (Treasurer)

Gillian trained with Scott-Moncrieff and qualified in 1993. Since then she has specialised in the charity sector, and is the firm's specialist charity audit partner. She has extensive practical experience of charity regulation and is responsible for ensuring technical compliance with charity regulation across all service sectors within her firm. She is Treasurer of a number of Scottish charities with income ranging from under £100,000 to over £11 million. She is currently a specialist charity lecturer for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), a member of its Charity Working Party and was a member of the Scottish Charity Law Review Commission.  She is a regular contributor on current accounting topics to charity publications within the UK.

Alison Kerr Robinson

Alison Kerr Robinson worked as a Family lawyer and Associate within Pagan Osborne's Family Law Team until August 2008. Prior to that, from 2000 to 2006 she worked as a Family Law Assistant at Mowat Hall Dick, becoming an Associate there in 2005. In 2006 she moved with other members of her team to Pagan Osborne where she continued to develop and enhance her interest in working in the fields of both Child and Education law.  In particular Alison regularly began to represent children and young people working directly as their solicitor and in addition was regularly appointed to act as a solicitor on behalf of curators ad litem (specialists appointed by the courts to represent the best interests of children). In 2007 Alison trained to become a Collaborative Family Lawyer. She was also elected as a committee member for 'The Family Law Association' and continued to serve on the committee until her departure from private practice in August 2008. Alison's love of working directly with children led to her making the decision to leave private practice and embark on a new career in teaching.

Bruce Adamson

Bruce is originally from Wellington, New Zealand. He has degrees in Law and History from Te Whare Wananga o Te Upoko o Te Ika a Maui/Victoria University of Wellington (link) and a Diploma in the International Protection of Human Rights from Åbo Akademi University in Finland. He practised as a barrister and solicitor in Wellington before moving to Scotland in 2002, qualifying as a solicitor in England and Wales in 2004, and in Scotland in 2006. Bruce worked for the Scottish Parliament and was a founding staff member of Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People before becoming the legal officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission when it was established in 2008. Bruce volunteered at the Wellington Community Law Centre from 1998 to 2002 and has been a member of the Edinburgh’s Children’s Panel since 2004. He was also an independent expert on Human Rights Institutions for the European Commission’s peer review mission to Turkey on judiciary and fundamental rights in 2011. 

Pauline Hoggan

Pauline Hoggan qualified as a social worker in 1973 and spent time working in area teams in Lothian, with an increasing focus on children in care, eventually becoming the manager of the Lothian permanence team then Principal Officer for Child Care Planning.  She gained the Diploma in Advanced Social Work Studies at Dundee University in 1993 with distinction. She then went to Argyll and Bute Council as Head of Service, becoming Chief Social Work Officer.  She later spent several years in London as Director of a voluntary adoption agency, before returning to Scotland as a self employed practitioner in 2003.

Current work includes chairing the Inverclyde Council Fostering and Adoption Panel, and the Action for Children Scottish Panel and being Chair of the North Lanarkshire Child Protection Committee.   She is also involved, as a volunteer and Board member, with a UK charity, the Children and Families International Foundation, whose focus is to develop and support Malawian family and kinship based care for orphaned children.

David Nichols

David was initially a research chemist but after a career change in his late 20s qualified as a solicitor in Scotland in 1972.  After two brief spells in private practice with Edinburgh firms he became a member of the legal staff of the Scottish Law Commission.  He retired from there in 2009 having been involved in a wide variety of law reform exercises.  In the Family Law area these have included: domestic violence and the matrimonial home, civil legal capacity and criminal responsibility of children and the abolition of illegitimacy as a legal concept.

He has also been tutoring and lecturing at the School of Law at Edinburgh University from 1972 to date in family law and other areas.  He is the author of several books in the Family Law field and is a co-editor of Greens Family Law Bulletin, a bimonthly updater for family law practitioners.

Professor Lesley McAra

Lesley McAra's research interests lie in the general areas of the sociology of punishment and the sociology of law and deviance. Particular interests include: youth crime and juvenile justice; comparative criminal justice; gender, crime and criminal justice; and the impact of multi-level governance on crime control and penal process.

She is Co-Director (with Susan McVie and David Smith) of theEdinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a longitudinal study of pathways into and out of offending for a cohort of around 4,300 young people. This programme of research has been funded by grants from the ESRC (R00237157, R000239150), the Nuffield Foundation and the Scottish Government and has an associated doctoral programme.

Lesley is a member of the Centre for Law and Society and an associate member of the Europa Institute, both located within the Edinburgh Law School.  She is also the Convenor of the Empirical Legal Research Network, a cross-University initiative aimed at facilitating partnership-working across different disciplines, pooling expertise and functioning as a resource bank for researchers at all levels of career.

Lesley is a member of the Editorial Boards of the British Journal of Criminology and Youth Justice.  She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the European Journal of Criminology.

Morag Jack

Morag Jack was a solicitor in private practice in Edinburgh before becoming an advocate in 2000.  She has a wide range of experience in civil and criminal court work.  She has been instructed in a number of contested cases in children’s referral proceeding and adoption proceedings.   Morag served a three year term as an advocate depute between 2008 and 2011.  Latterly, she was attached to the National Sexual Crimes Unit.   Between 2005 and 2008 Morag was a convener of the Additional Support Needs Tribunal for Scotland.  She has been a serving convener of the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland since 2008.  She is co-author of Adoption of Children in Scotland, 4^th Edition.  Morag has a particular interest in child and family law and mental health law.

Professor James Furnell

Areas of Practice Child, Family Law. Year of Call: 1993. Devil Masters: The Hon. Lord Brailsford, The Hon. Lord Turnbull.Qualifications: M.A. (Hons) University of Aberdeen, Dip. Clin. Psyc. University of Glasgow, Ph.D University of Stirling, LL.B University of Dundee, Fellow, British Psychological Society. Publications: Various, including Emotional Abuse of Children, Child Care, Psychosomatic Complaints, Interface of Psychology and Law. Appointments: Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Medicine, University of Edinburgh. Visiting Professor, Glasgow Caledonian University. Consultant Clinical Psychologist (Child Health), Forth Valley Health. Board 1980 – 1998. Chairman, Division of Clinical Psychology, British Psychological Society 1988 – 1989. Further Information: Chartered Psychologist.

Helen Hammond

Bio to follow

Our Patrons

Dame Elish Angiolini 

Dame Elish was appointed in 2001 as the first non - political Solicitor General for Scotland on 5 December 2001 – also the first woman, the first Procurator Fiscal and the first solicitor to hold the post. She was installed as Lord Advocate on 12 October 2006.

During her appointment Dame Elish took particular interest in supporting the children who are witnesses in criminal prosecutions, contributing greatly to the improvements in the experience of these most vulnerable witnesses. Her Guidance on the handling of offences allegedly committed by children has helped to ensure that only those cases which are not suited for the Children's Hearing system go through the adult courts.  

She chaired the Department's Strategy Group on Diversity and helped victims from minority communities achieve greater confidence in the prosecution service. Her leadership in the area of domestic violence was recognised by the charity Zero Tolerance when she was given their inaugural "Women in the public Eye" award – one of several awards and distinctions she has received during her time in office. 

The review of the investigation and prosecution of rape and sexual crimes which she instigated was a major undertaking which resulted in profound and successful changes to prosecution practices including the establishment of the specialist National Sexual Crimes Unit, the first of its type in Europe. She also set up the highly successful Health and Safety Division and the National Deaths Inquiry Unit.

Dame Elish has recently taken up an appointment as visiting Professor of Law at Strathclyde University and is now in practice at the Bar with Terra Firma Chambers. She is also chairing a Commission into Women Offenders in Scotland.

Sheriff Brian Kearney

Sheriff Brian Kearney, formerly a sheriff of Glasgow and Strathkelvin at Glasgow, he served as a legal member of the Parole Board for Scotland from 2008 until 2010. In 1988 Sheriff Kearney was appointed by the Secretary of State for Scotland as a member of the Review Group charged with considering the reform of child care law (reported 1990). In 1989 and 1992 he presided over the Inquiry into Child Care Policies in Fife (reported 1992).

He was Chair of the management committee of The Glasgow Marriage Guidance Council (now Couples Counselling) and is now its Honorary President. Sheriff Kearney is an acknowledged expert on the Children's Hearings System, and author of several books on the Hearings system and court procedure, together with numerous learned articles.

Janys Scott

Janys Scott qualified and practised as a solicitor in England and in Scotland before entering the Scottish bar. She has served as Convenor of the Scottish Child Law Centre (1992 - 1997), Stepfamily Scotland (1998 - 2002) and the Scottish Legal Group of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (2004 - 2010). She was part of the Scottish Executive's Adoption Policy Review Group, which reported in 2005. She specialises in family law, including divorce. She is also a recognised expert in education law. In 2005 Mrs Scott was appointed a part-time sheriff.