Leading social work academic who played a key role in the Maria Colwell inquiry of the 1970s
Olive Stevenson, who has died aged 82, was the leading social work academic of her generation. She helped to improve the well-being and safety of vulnerable children and adults, made an immense contribution in teaching, writing and practice, and influenced several generations of scholars.
She was also the founding editor of the British Journal of Social Work, the subject's first academic journal in Britain. In the 1970s she came to national attention when she was a member of the inquiry into the death from abuse of the seven-year-old Maria Colwell: in her minority report she supported the efforts of social workers.
Olive was born in South Croydon, Surrey. Her parents had moved to nearby Purley from Dublin. Her father, a civil servant, was a protestant and feared for his career prospects in the newly formed Irish republic. Her half-sister had died from tuberculosis and Olive grew up with parents who were anxious about her health. But Olive thrived at school and won a place at Oxford to study English. She then trained in social work at the London School of Economics.
Her first job was as a child care officer with Devon county council, which was known for its good practice. In 1958 she enrolled on the demanding and prestigious advanced casework course at the Tavistock clinic, London, and after this went into academic teaching, first at the University of Bristol and then, in 1962, at Oxford. After 14 successful years there, she was appointed to a professorship at the University of Keele. In 1984 she joined Nottingham University as professor of social work.
Her first book was Someone Else's Child: A Book for Foster Parents (1964). I remember one foster parent telling me that the book had helped her to understand what the task involved and made her feel appreciated. In all, Olive wrote or co-wrote 12 books plus numerous chapters, journal articles and research reports. Writing seemed to come easily to her and even non-academics found her simple prose pleasurable to read.
She covered a wide range of topics including children in care, child abuse and neglect, child protection and inter-agency working. In later years she turned her attention to the safeguarding of vulnerable adults. When the new local authority social services departments were established in the 1970s, Olive wrote Social Service Teams: The Practitioner's View (1978). Through her work with the British Journal of Social Work she also became well known in Hong Kong and Australia.
Olive came to wider attention when she was involved in the inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Maria Colwell. This inquiry upset Olive deeply. She did not agree with the way the committee had interpreted the evidence and in her minority report pointed out the complexities of the role performed by social workers. She also wrote a section of the main report on inter-professional working, then an unopened area. This all brought her what she described as something like celebrity, which she did not welcome.
She retired officially from the University of Nottingham in 1994, but continued studying and teaching, supervising research students and chairing committees. She was effective thanks to the combination of her intellectual power, ability to communicate, emotional intelligence and her wit. She only really gave up her work at the university in 2010.
In June this year came her memoir, Reflections on a Life in Social Work, in which she shared 60 years of experience and the motivations that had inspired her life.
Olive also had a skill and a capacity for friendship, which I enjoyed for the 50 or so years I knew her. She is survived by two nieces and a nephew.
• Olive Stevenson, social worker and academic, born 13 December 1930; died 30 September 2013
0 comments:
Post a Comment