Meet the Scotland team

Meet the Scotland Advisory Group:

Gill McKinna 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. It 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 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 most of her frontline social work career specialising in the delivery of the Caledonian System. Gill has a commitment to trauma-informed practice and to the continued growth and development of the Caledonian System.

Katie Cosgrove worked as Gender Based Violence Programme Lead at Public Health Scotland

Mhairi McGowan is an independent Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) consultant involved in delivering training, developing and managing a variety of projects and facilitating discussions between various strategic and operational agencies to find solutions. In a career that has spanned nearly 50 years, Mhairi has worked in the Civil Service, the trade union movement and the VAWG movement. Her particular focus throughout has been bringing people together to understand and respond, either operationally or strategically, to important issues. Mhairi helped set up the first women’s refuge in Greater Easterhouse in Glasgow and managed the first court based domestic abuse advocacy service in Scotland. She has worked with COPFS, Police Scotland and the Scottish Government a range of issues including the development of the Scottish equivalent of Claire’s Law (the Disclosure Scheme for Domestic Abuse in Scotland) and the DA (Scotland) Act that criminalised coercive control.

Anna Mitchell is the UK Lead and Special Projects Manager for the Safe & Together Institute. The Institute’s mission is to create, nurture and sustain a global network of domestic violence-informed child welfare professionals, communities and systems. Anna has worked in VAWG services and operational and strategic roles within local and national government for more than twenty years. Anna has a passion and commitment to advancing systemic responses to domestic abuse, to partner with survivors, intervene with perpetrators and improve outcomes for families.

Helen Hughes is a partner with McAuley McArthy & Co in Paisley, and is a specialist in family law, with a particular expertise in cases involving domestic abuse. She has practiced in this area of law since 1987, and as the former Chair of the Family Law Association, was involved in consultations with the Scottish Government and SLAB on legal aid issues in family law and domestic abuse cases. Helen is editor and co author of Domestic Abuse and Scots Law and an editor of Greens Practice Styles. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Scottish Women’s Right Centre and is also a mediator accredited by the Law Society of Scotland. Helen is currently the Chair of CALM (Comprehensive Accredited Lawyers Mediators). Throughout her career she has provided advice and guidance to voluntary organisations, including Renfrewshire Women’s Aid. She regularly provides training to solicitors and the public sector on family law, mediation and issues arising in domestic abuse cases and delivers the Civil Law training input for the IDAA training course organised by SafeLives, Scottish Women’s Aid and ASSIST.

Girijamba Polubothu is the manager of Shakti Women’s Aid in Edinburgh, which also has an outreach service in Fife Tayside and Forth Valley in Scotland. She has worked extensively with minority ethnic organisations and has been working with Shakti Women’s Aid for the past 19 years. She currently sits on the Scottish Government’s Forced Marriage Network Group, and has been actively involved in drafting the Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which criminalises forced marriage, and multi-agency practice guidelines – handling cases of forced marriage. She is also one of the Forced Marriage Commissioners (National Commission on Forced Marriage). Girijamba is an active member of the National No Recourse to Public Funds Campaign Group lead by Southall Black Sisters and is locally involved with various VAWG parrtnerships, and Edinburgh’s Marac and Cross Party group – Men’s Violence against Women and Children.

Dr Christine Goodall is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Oral Surgery at The University of Glasgow’s School of Medicine Dentistry and Nursing. She trained in Academic Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in Glasgow and Aberdeen and it was her work with facial trauma patients over many years that led to her founding the charity Medics Against Violence in 2008. Medics against Violence aims to prevent violence and reduce injury. They work in schools to help young people understand the consequences of violence from a health perspective. They also developed and provide training on domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault for health professionals, and others in frontline roles, through their Ask Support Care programme. They work in partnership with the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit to run the hospital-based violence intervention programme, Navigator. Christine’s research interests lie in the fields of alcohol, violence and facial trauma. She is an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health and was awarded an OBE for her work in violence prevention in 2016.

John Devaney is the Centenary Professor of Social Work at the University of Edinburgh. He practised as a social worker for nearly 20 years in various roles, and his research relates to domestic abuse, the impact of adversity in childhood across the lifecourse, and child maltreatment. He has published three books and numerous articles on domestic abuse arising from his research. He has provided expert advice to governments throughout Europe on their strategies and approaches to addressing domestic abuse, and initiated the now biennial European Conference on Domestic Violence. He is currently an invited member of the Scottish Government’s working group on misogyny and criminal justice.