2025
In Aid of
ScotsCare
Amount donated: £24,275
The charity for Scots in London
Whatever the problem, ScotsCare provides life-changing support via grants, advocacy or counselling to help Scots in London. ScotsCare tailors support to end hardship: from securing accommodation for homeless Scots, through children’s services, job coaching, grants for essential household goods, help to access benefits and entitlements, addiction and trauma psychotherapy, to activities for the elderly.
Some London Scots and their families have complex entrenched needs that cross generations. Many are socially excluded, facing a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing in areas of high crime, bad health and family breakdown.
ScotsCare is an efficient, modern charity that’s evolved over 400 years of proud service. Its aim is to break the cycle of poverty, but its funding no longer stretches to meet the needs of clients. Last year, it helped over 600 people with wide needs and services.
Chair
Claire McCorquodale
Claire grew up in Cornwall, trained bilingually and then worked in London. She worked at Christie's and then trained as a Montessori teacher where she discovered her lifelong passion for education.
She is married to James and they farm in The Borders. They have two teenage children.
Claire fundraised at her children's local schools and has been involved in CLIC Borders where she helped raise substantial funds for the development of a Borders garden for CLICs new house opposite Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
Claire is now a volunteer for The Food Train, a charity that distributes food to the elderly and those sheltering.
Sponsors
Speakers
The Baroness Meyer
Baroness Catherine Meyer, our speaker today, is a British politician, businesswoman and Conservative life peer. She is the widow of Sir Christopher Meyer, the British former Ambassador to the United States.
In 1999, she founded the charity PACT, now Action Against Abduction (AAA), when despite having custody of her children, Alexander and Constantin, her German ex-husband refused to return them to London after a summer holiday visit in 1994. This led to her almost decade-long legal battle in the German and English courts to gain access to her sons. Her account of these events is found in her two books.
She married Christopher Meyer on the eve of his departure to Washington to become British Ambassador to the United States. During their five and a half years in America, she campaigned against international parental child abduction alongside a number of American parents in a similar situation with Germany. On her return to the UK from America, she broadened AAA's mission to embrace children who go missing for any reason. This has led to close co-operation with the Home Office, the police, CEOP and other charities.
Following time as Treasurer to the Conservative Party, she was appointed to the House of Lords as a Life Peer in 2018 taking the title Baroness Meyer, of Nine Elms.
Following the death of her husband Christopher, Catherine transformed his unpublished manuscript about her ancestral Russian family’s plight during the Russian Revolution up to and including World War II, into the novel “Survivors”, which charts her family’s plight during this challenging period. Copies of the books will be available to buy today for £20 and Lady Meyer will be more than happy to sign copies for you.