Starcatchers’ Chief Executive Rhona Matheson was joined by researcher Dr Rachel Drury and research assistant Claire Ruckert who shared their work to date. They were also joined by Bruce Adamson, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People; Chief Executive of Children 1st, Mary Glasgow; University of Edinburgh’s Professor Kay Tisdall; and Juliet Harris from Together, who took part in a wider conversation with attendees around babies’ rights in Scotland.

Speaker biographies

  1. Bruce Adamson - Children and Young People's Commissioner

    Commissioner Bruce Adamson promotes and protects the right children and young people. Before becoming the commissioner in May 2017, Bruce worked as a lawyer. In this role, he built up over 20 years of experience working on children’s rights issues.

  2. Mary Glasgow, Children 1st

    Mary is a passionate advocate for children’s rights in policy and practice. She is the chair of Together, the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights, and is a former trustee of Starcatchers, Scotland’s arts and early years organisation. She was also on the Board of Social Work Scotland and is a member of the Children and Families committee of the Coalition of Care Providers in Scotland. Mary has a particular interest in the impact of childhood trauma and is a passionate campaigner for trauma responsive and relationship based approaches to supporting children and their families recover from adversity.

  3. Juliet Harris, Together

    Over the past decade, Juliet has led work to progress the human rights of children across legislation, policy and practice. She is Vice Chair of the Children’s Parliament, a Trustee of the Environmental Rights Centre Scotland and is a founder member of the Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland. She sits on numerous Scottish Government Advisory Groups, including the UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board and the Human Rights Bill Advisory Board. She is former chair of the Rights of the Child UK Coalition and has played an active role of a number of UN Taskforces, including UN Committee’s Day of General Discussion on Children as Human Rights Defenders.

  4. Prof. Kay Tisdall, Chair of Childhood Policy at The University of Edinburgh

    Kay works within childhood studies and particularly children’s human rights across a number of policy areas, from education to family law to child protection, on such topics as children affected by domestic abuse, children with disabilities and additional support needs, and child marriage. In particular, she has a collaborative programme with children, young people, adult stakeholders and academics, on children and young people’s participation in decision-making. This includes how to involve children and young people meaningfully and ethically within research, as well as policy-making and formal decisions.