The Director Diaries

The Director

Diaries For this issue, Jasmin from our National Representative Body sat down with Denny, Who Cares? Scotland’s Director of Advocacy, to find out more about him, his work and the future he sees for Who Cares? Scotland and its members.

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?

I’m Denny, believe it or not I’m 50 years old and I’m married with 2, now quite big, kids, Connor and Molly. I really enjoy football and American football, so much that I stay up late most weeks to watch the NFL. The teams I support are the New York Giants and Rangers. I don’t have a passport at the moment so I wasn’t able to go to Seville to see the Europa League final but I’m quite happy about that since we lost.

I have 10 cats which is a lot of fun and I generally just enjoy having a good time. I like walking in the country, listening to podcasts and spending time with my family.

What do the teams you oversee do across the country?

I manage 7 regional Advocacy and Participation Managers across the country and now a Volunteer Manager. We will also soon have an Assistant Director to help improve our advocacy as much as possible. As the name suggests, my teams focus on advocacy and participation. Our advocacy offer is continuing to grow, we have a large contract from the government and The Promise has highlighted its importance.

Participation has picked up again after the pandemic. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to have a summer camp this year but our summer programme was popular last year and we’re hoping to have some regional activities take place this year. We’re also looking forward to getting back together with members at the Members’ Assembly and Love Rally in October.

How did you get involved with Who Cares? Scotland?

I used to work in a residential care setting and often worked alongside Who Cares? Scotland workers. I was always really interested in the work that they did, as I used to help run a young people’s parliament which focused on rights.

“When the job offer for

Who Cares? Scotland came up, which was about 16 years ago now, I had to go for it.

I started off in a research position working in secure units looking to achieve better outcomes for secure services. I interviewed young people a lot and looked into persistent offending among Care Experienced people.

Then I moved into a role in local authority advocacy, I was an advocate in South Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire and Kibble before taking on the role of Corporate Parenting/Training Manager which involved delivering training to Corporate Parents on how to support Care Experienced people. I then looked at National Participation, when we started our summer camp and other events, before working on our Communities that Care Project in Renfrewshire. For the last 18 months or so I have been the Director of Advocacy. I’ve been all over,

I’m a bit of a Who

Cares? Scotland lifer.

How do you manage such a large team?

It can be quite difficult because we’re all spread out so far. We used to use Perth as a place to meet since it’s relatively central, but the pandemic actually helped us learn how to connect digitally and we meet more than ever now.

Covid actually brought us all a lot of empathy in that we got to feel, to a lesser extent, what isolation actually feels like, allowing us to relate better to the Care Experienced people we support. This helped emphasise why the lifelong nature of our membership offer is so important, as these experiences don’t leave you when you hit a certain age.

Can you tell us a bit about the Communities that Care project?

We received funding from an STV appeal for a project educating the community about care. We first started in schools, delivering PSE sessions, holding school drop-ins, and carrying out teacher training on trauma and how best to deal with it. We also started running some community groups – some were for fun and others involved more serious topics, like your rights. Young people were allowed to come along and bring their friends.

We’ve also held mini conferences and training events in the community to influence decision-makers to change care, and we have seen real positive local change. We believe that if people understand care there should be a huge reduction in stigma

This work has now extended to Edinburgh and there are more local authorities interested. The ultimate goal is for whole country to understand care.

What are your hopes for volunteers in the organisation?

Volunteering is a huge part of our organisation and we just invested in a manager which is really important. This will help us increase our number of volunteers so we can reach members we don’t yet reach. Care Experienced people often don’t feel a sense of belonging in their communities, a good volunteering programme could help fix this.

What is the Who Cares? Scotland Strategic Plan?

Our new strategic plan is very important as it will inform our work going forward for several years. We have just finished a consultation with our members, external stakeholders and our staff, and we’re in the process of analysing responses to use them to help form the plan.

Member involvement is vital to us, as we are essentially creating the [strategic] plan for them so their voice is extremely important. We’re following a good process and we have a great team building it. Keep an eye out for the plan when we launch it in

October.