Royal Caledonian Education Trust

On the 31^st December 2020 I will be retiring, which of course means that I will be leaving RCET after almost five hugely rewarding years. When I joined in early 2016, the Charity had just moved to Scotland after 200 years in London. Whilst of course we had worked very successfully in Scotland for many years, this was a new chapter in the life of a unique organisation. The challenge then for myself and the team was to build on that work but to now establish and embed ourselves as ‘Scotland’s Armed Forces Children’s Charity’ and grow and develop our services.

I’m proud of what we have achieved since that permanent move north in 2016. We have grown considerably, introducing the organisations first 5 year strategic plan. We have stabilised our existing services and developed new ones. We have doubled the workforce and crucially, implemented a new financial strategy which I believe gives RCET a strong and sustainable financial future.

A hugely significant move was changing our constitution. This allowed us to not just support more children and young people, and to continue to focus on supporting children in education, but crucially to now develop services to support their wider wellbeing. Underpinning all of this has been our developing children’s rights approach, our commitment to listening to and acting on the voice of children and young people and our emerging role in influencing policy within Government and elsewhere.

I’m grateful to have had such a strong, resourceful and professional team beside me – it is they that have delivered, developed and underpinned the innovative services that we provide. I believe the future is hugely positive for RCET and I wish my successor every good wish and success in taking RCET to the next stage of its evolution.