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Hannah Dickson

HANNAH’S ROLE

Hannah’s role involves identifying and supporting activity to improve community justice outcomes locally and nationally within the context of the National Strategy for Community Justice.

BACKGROUND

Hannah has worked in the field of community safety, policing and partnerships for the past 14 years. She started as an intelligence analyst with British Transport Police after finishing a MSc in Forensic Science and returned to Scotland in 2009 to work as a partnership analyst with West Lothian’s community safety partnership (gaining a Diploma in Criminal Intelligence Analysis) and latterly the Community Planning Partnership. Most recently she worked with the Scottish Community Safety Network, firstly as a National Development Officer and latterly as the organisation’s Development manager. Her work with SCSN also supported a secondment to the Scottish Government’s Building Safer Communities programme.

Dianne Thom

DIANNE’S ROLE

Dianne is one of the national trainers and advisors for the Caledonian system, which is Scotland’s accredited domestic abuse perpetrator programme with integrated women and children’s support services. Dianne co-designs and delivers the training for the system, is involved in the development of guidance and manuals that support the system, and she provides ongoing expert advice to the local authorities in Scotland that deliver the Caledonian system.

BACKGROUND

Dianne’s academic career includes a PG Dip with Distinction in Social Work and a degree in Corporate Communication. She has extensive experience working within Scotland’s justice system, having fulfilled statutory criminal justice Social Work and Senior Social Work roles within local authority fieldwork, programmes and Court teams. Whilst in these positions, she also specialised in delivering the Caledonian system including supporting men to address their abusive behaviour, undertaking management roles, contributing to the system’s reaccreditation and delivery of the system’s training programme. Dianne joined Community Justice Scotland in 2021.

Claire Penny

CLAIRE’S ROLE

Within the Community Justice Scotland’s team, Claire has overall responsibility for the management and administration of the throughcare and mentoring budget.

BACKGROUND

Claire has over 20 years’ experience of working across both voluntary and statutory sectors. Initially, spending almost 9 years working for a drug and alcohol misuse support and education charity which predominantly focussed on young people, many leaving and entering the criminal justice system. She then moved on to work with Borders ADP as their alcohol development officer.

Claire then moved to work within the world of grants, funding and participatory budgeting. Working as Scottish Borders Councils, Funding Officer within the Communities & Partnerships team, directly supporting communities to identify need, build local area plans and distribute funding for projects of all scale and size.

Most recently, she worked for Volunteer Centre Borders as their Chief Officer as well as one of the four partners within Borders Third Sector Interface, before taking up her post with Community Justice Scotland

Angela Milligan

ANGELA’S ROLE

Angela’s role is providing business support to the Learning Development and Innovation & Caledonian team. She is involved in managing core training schedules and waiting lists of students, assisting in collation of assessment results, minute taker of working groups/National Trainer Groups, being point of contact, assisting in the daily function in all areas of administration within the team.

BACKGROUND

Prior to joining Community Justice Scotland, Angela worked in Administration within Justice Social Work, having an extensive knowledge and experience in areas of Court, UPW, Throughcare and latterly MAPPA. Angela joined Community Justice Scotland as a Learning Development & Innovation Support Officer in 2021. Angela has a particular interest in MAPPA administration. Angela has voluntary roles within her children’s football team and school parent council.

Keyvan Toghyan

KEYVAN’S ROLE

Keyvan is a Learning Development and Innovation Lead, tasked with driving learning through innovation. Keyvan focuses on the design and delivery of world-class training and professional development in collaboration with justice sector partners and the wider Scottish workforce.

BACKGROUND

Keyvan’s academic career includes a PG Dip Cert in Social Work and a Degree in Sociology MA. He began his career working in the third sector specialising in homelessness. After qualifying as a Social Worker in 2009, he took up his first statutory Social Work role in Community Care. Since 2011, he has worked in the field of Criminal Justice and has an extensive experience working within Scotland’s justice system where he has fulfilled statutory criminal justice Social Work and Senior Social Work roles. Keyvan joined Community Justice Scotland in 2021 to take up the role of Learning, Development and Innovation Lead.

Victoria Guthrie

VIC’S ROLE

Vic’s role involves working with local and national partners to help drive activity which will help us achieve the ambitions set out within the National Strategy for community justice and improve outcomes for individuals and communities.

BACKGROUND

Vic is passionate about improving outcomes for people in or affected by the criminal justice system. She has a background in Psychology and Psychological Research Methods (BSc (Hons) and MSc) and has been involved in a wide variety of justice related research since 2007. Her main research areas relate to the development, delivery, and evaluation of interventions and support packages for people in or affected by the criminal justice system. Vic has a particular interest in interventions which support mental health and substance misuse recovery as well as parenting and family support programs.

Prior to becoming an Improvement Lead at Community Justice Scotland, she worked as a projects officer within CJS, a research officer for Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems and as a Senior Research Fellow and Project Manager at the University of Edinburgh.

Richard Thomson

RICHARD’S ROLE

Richard’s role is to identify ways to improve community justice outcomes and influence the necessary changes within the context of the National Strategy for Community Justice.

BACKGROUND

Richard has varied work experience and was most recently a community justice coordinator in Clackmannanshire.

Previously, he was the Service Manager for Information and Performance Management at Apex Scotland before taking a consultancy role at a start-up tech company connected to University College London which provides case management systems to multi-organisation partnerships and shards personal data appropriately between different organisations.

He is passionate about enabling the untapped potential of people who are touched by crime or the justice system and empowering their post traumatic growth. This led him to support the incubation and development of another social enterprise called Resilience Learning Partnership, which encourages people with complex lived experience to learn from each other, link their learning to robust research evidence and then influence change

Gill McKinna

GILL’S ROLE

Gill is the Head of the Caledonian System National Team.  The Caledonian System is an integrated approach to address men’s use of abusive behaviour towards female partners. The Caledonian System consists of a court mandated men’s behaviour change programme with integrated women’s and children’s services and is accredited by the Scottish Advisory Panel for Offender Rehabilitation.  Gill’s role is to oversee the implementation of the system and to progress its roll out across Scotland.

BACKGROUND

Gill’s academic career includes a degree in Social Work and a Master’s degree in Psychological Trauma Studies. She has extensive experience working within Scotland’s justice system and has spent the majority of her front line social work career working for a local authority where she specialised in delivering the Caledonian system. She has undertaken numerous roles within the Caledonian system including supporting victims of domestic abuse, helping men to change their abusive behaviour and management roles. Gill has a commitment to trauma informed practice and to the continued growth and development of the Caledonian system. Gill joined Community Justice Scotland in 2020 when the Caledonian Central team was established.

Tash Pile

 

TASH’S ROLE

As Digital Marketing Officer, Tash’s role is to help increase awareness and understanding of community justice through digital channels and wider marketing activity. This involves managing and creating content for Community Justice Scotland’s social media pages, blog and website to reach and engage with new audiences.

BACKGROUND

Tash has enjoyed a varied marketing career, working in a range of industries including the third sector, higher education and book publishing. She is experienced in running print and digital marketing campaigns; project-management; content creation; website development and social media management.

Astrid Shearer

 

ASTRID’S ROLE

Astrid offers support to the Caledonian System by overseeing the collection and analysis of evaluatory data.

BACKGROUND

Astrid spent the early part of her career working in the Arts and Heritage sector. With a BA Hons in Design and Craft, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Arts Management she spent many years working in contemporary gallery management, exhibition curation and arts marketing.

However, after taking a career break and developing her interest in Domestic Abuse advocacy, she is excited to support the work that she passionately believes can make a significant improvement to the lives of women, children and men.