Walking the walk with Professor Ito
Published: 14 March 2018
Mental Health and Wellbeing's ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Centre has welcomed Professor Kayoko as a visiting member of their team and, in a series of walking meetings, is benefiting from her expertise and experience in the field of foster care
At the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Centre, in Mental Health and Wellbeing, we’ve been honoured and delighted to welcome Professor Kayoko Ito who is going to be with our team until November 2021.
Kayoko is an expert on foster care, and is a foster carer herself. She has conducted a fascinating study of foster care breakdown in Japan and plans to repeat that here in Scotland.
Kayoko arrived back in the dark days of March, had to quarantine for 12 days and, like all of us, has had to work from home since then. We hated the thought of our valued Japanese colleague being "stuck in the hoose", so we’ve been meeting Kayoko in Glasgow’s beautiful parks for walk-meetings. So far, we’ve been to Kelvingrove, Dawsholm, Maryhill and Linn Parks – and Kayoko has discovered that Japanese Cherry Blossom is also Glasgow Cherry Blossom.
Long walks have been a wonderful way to chat around the topic that we are passionate about, and I’ve learned just how differently we approach our care systems in Japan and Scotland. Kayoko’s input has already helped our team to think more clearly about the families we work with and will undoubtedly influence our work moving forward.
We’ve been meeting on zoom with some of our collaborators at the Universities of Stirling and Lancaster who are about to launch the second phase of their fantastic "Permanently Progressing" study of children in foster care. On 04 June 2021, we’ll being having a team day out to visit both our Stirling colleagues and the Castle. We all feel we deserve a trip after the last few months.
Professor Helen Minnis
Mental Health and Wellbeing
First published: 14 March 2018
<< May 2021