On Friday the 4th of October the CLD Standards Council hosted its annual lecture with the support of Glasgow University School of Education.
Kate Still, who led the Independent Review of CLD, delivered the lecture to practitioners from across Scotland and, alongside our Chair Alan Sherry OBE, took questions from the audience.
Kate spoke about her personal CLD journey as she undertook the review of CLD and about how learning challenges in her family shaped her determination to make skills and learning development more accessible, and more supportive. This was a guiding factor in how Kate approached the review.
Kate shared stories from the meetings she had with Young People and Adults and how CLD impacted their learning, wellbeing, and life. Kate was able to directly link these sessions into how she shaped the recommendations.
We support Kate’s call to the sector to take ownership of the recommendations and seek to engage proactively with decision makers on the next steps.
Here are some thoughts about the lecture from CLD Standards Council members:
“Kate Still encouraged everyone to ‘embrace your power to believe in people’ and talked of the value of the transformative CLD experiences that she witnessed across Scotland whilst undertaking the Independent Review. Kate’s said that ‘too many people still don’t know about it’ and highlighted the pressures on CLD services and the continuing issues with lack of parity of esteem with school-based education provision. Talking of CLD being the invisible glue that holds communities together, Kate reminded us of the live-saving impact of CLD and the reasons why many of us came into this line of work in the first place.” – Julie Beckett
“A clear message I took home is that we are stronger together, a unified CLD sector has an opportunity with the report to expand the excellent work across Scotland serving more learners better”. Emma Whitelock
“This year’s lecture was fantastic – both challenging and inspiring. The publication of the independent review of CLD is obviously one of the biggest moments for our sector in recent years, so it was great to hear directly from Kate Still about the review process and findings. Kate started by sharing some powerful experiences from her own learning journey, highlighting people that had made a real difference in her life. She reminded CLD practitioners to ‘embrace your power to believe in people.’ Kate also thanked learners and practitioners for engaging so positively in the review. For her, the evidence from the review clearly shows that CLD has a significant impact in communities, but not enough people know that CLD works. Kate argued that the review report makes a strong case for investment in CLD and for an effective CLD workforce across Scotland. As we wait for the Scottish Government’s response to the Review, Kate called for unified response from the CLD sector to the review recommendations, and encouraged all of us in the CLD sector to be pro-active in using the evidence and recommendations from the review to make change happen where we can”. – John Galt