Board Of Trustees

Gillian Donald

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.

Rebecca Strachan

Rebecca trained in Edinburgh and London in Sick Children’s nursing, general nursing, intensive care and neonatal paediatrics before studying for a Master’s in Education, followed by Doctoral studies in health and developmental psychology. She has enjoyed a wide experience as a lecturer/senior lecturer at University, and in clinical practice as head of Research and Development (RIE). She has had a broad base experience of Ethics committee (LREC) and has taught health care ethics to Master’s students. She has developed training programmes in Child Protection within acute hospital settings (A&E). Rebecca’s main research interest reflects her clinical background working with young people who suffer chronic illness. She has been closely involved with the rights of children and young people, particularly in relation to their health needs, and has a range of clinical and academic publications.

Rebecca is presently working with the Royal College of Physicians to introduce, across Scotland, standards which will be implemented to meet the needs of young people in transition, i.e. from paediatric care to adolescent services, through to care in the adult sector. The needs of the ‘forgotten tribe’ are beginning to be recognised!

Rebecca’s work in the voluntary sector includes work as Development Advisor with the Child Psychotherapy Trust, where her particular interest was with young people who progress through childhood with unmet emotional needs and go on to experience the judicial system. Her present role is with Action for Sick Children as Development Advisor (Scotland). The post, now in its final year, is funded by BBC Children in Need and involved influencing health care at strategic level for children and young people in Scotland and encouraging a climate of participation by children, young people and their families.

Maggie Mellon

Maggie has been a social worker since qualifying in 1977. She has worked in a wide range of positions in Scotland and in England, mostly in children and family work. Since her return to Scotland from London in 1994 she has held a variety of practice and policy posts in children and family work in both local government and the voluntary sector.  From 1999 to 2004 she worked for NCH Scotland as Head of Public Policy, and is currently Director of Children and Family Services with Children 1 st (formerly RSSPCC).  She has written and edited a number of publications. These include NCH Scotland's ‘Factfile’ from 2000- 2004, the report of the Kilbrandon Now Inquiry, and editing and contributing to ‘Meeting Needs Addressing Deeds’, funded by the Scottish Executive, to promote better understanding of and working with young people who offend.

Her current work with Children 1st includes the promotion of family group conferencing as a model for decision making about children and families which dramatically redefines the relationship between professionals and families and has the capacity to reshape service provision.

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 Adamson is originally from New Zealand and has degrees in law and history from Victoria University of Wellington. 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. He worked for the Scottish Parliament before becoming a founding staff member of Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young people in 2005. In 2008 he helped establish the Scottish Human Rights Institution for Scotland, where he is currently the legal officer. Bruce volunteered at the Wellington Community Law Centre from 1998 to 2002 and has been a member of the Edinburgh Children’s Panel since 2004.”

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.