Hi, we are Marcel and Matthias from the University of Muenster in Germany. We stayed at the Scottish Child Law Centre for about three weeks and had the opportunity to see a lot of different things there.
Our main task was to take the incoming calls and add them and the callers’ details to the database so that the solicitors would be able to call them back. At first it was quite the challenge to take to phone for the first time, but after a while you get used to it and it really is fun; so be brave and take your first call! Sometimes we got the opportunity to sit in with Briony, one of the solicitors, and listen to her calling people back. We would type her advice while she was talking to the callers on the phone, which allowed us to get an insight into Scottish Law.
Lena organized a guide through the Scottish Parliament one day where we got to know a lot about the Scottish Parliament and saw some places you would not be able to see regularly. This came in quite handy as we were lucky to stay at the SCLC right at the time of the Roundtable Discussion on Family Group Conferencing. The staff really put a lot of work in this event to get some good speakers and an interesting outline to inform other solicitors and others that are working with children on Family Group Conferencing, a relatively new and not that well known way of solving problems in families.
We also were able to visit one of the SCLC’s training courses on child protection which gave us an idea how child protection is working in Scotland and what difficulties might arise.
The people working at the SCLC are incredibly nice and welcoming. It was a really good place to work at as you could ask them for anything, not just work-related; if you need any advice regarding sights you have to see in Edinburgh or where to get the best Scottish food, you can always ask them and they will help you!
We learned the SCLC to be an exceptional organization providing free legal advice to children and their families, something that should not only be promoted in Scotland.
We really loved staying at the SCLC and would recommend it to anyone who is searching for an internship or simply wants to volunteer in his free time.
Marcel and Matthias, University of Muenster
30 March 2016
Scottish Child Law Centre Blog 