Munro leads New Year roll of honour in social care

Professor Eileen Munro has been awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours List following her review into child protection, which last year called for sweeping reforms to assessments and performance management.

The gong, the highest mainstream honour below a knighthood or damehood, was for services to children and young people, and also reflects Munro’s distinguished career as an academic as professor of social policy at the London School of Economics.

The government has agreed to implement key recommendations from Munro’s review, including removing deadlines for assessments.

Social Work Reform Board chair Moira Gibb went one better than Munro and was awarded a damehood for services to social work and local government.

Gibb, who recently stepped down as chief executive of Camden Council, has become a significant voice in social work as chair of the reform board and, previously, head of the Social Work Task Force, whose 2009 report called for reforms to raise social work’s status.

Alongside Munro, CBEs were also awarded to Richard Jones, Marion Davis and Dinesh Bhugra, the most recent past presidents of, respectively, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

All three led their respective organisations through a tough year – 2010-11 – in which the scale of government cuts to social care and the NHS were made clear.

There was also a CBE for Jim Mansell, the country’s leading expert on supporting people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour.

Mansell, emeritus professor of learning disability at Kent University’s Tizard Centre, has published two reports on supporting the client group for the Department of Health, and his ideas have come to the fore since news of alleged abuse at Winterbourne View hospital broke last May.

Among frontline social workers, Henry Mayne, a practitioner at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, received an MBE for services to visually impaired people in Northern Ireland. There was also an MBE for Eileen Wheatley, who retired last year as a senior social worker for Cambridgeshire Council, and for former Cafcass family court adviser Stephanie Martin, who also worked as a foster carer.

A number of foster carers also received MBEs: James Bond, a carer in Essex and former chair of the Fostering Network; John and Patricia Bonthron, who are carers in Caerphilly, South Wales; Clive and Sharon Cumming; Mary Doyle (Isle of Wight); Janet Finch (Coventry); and James and Phyllis O’Reilly (Staffordshire);

Others social care figures honoured in the 2012 list included:-

• Child abuse expert and child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Eileen Vizard (CBE).
  
• Former director of children’s services at Sutton Council, Dr Ian Birnbaum (OBE).
  
• Professor Celia Brackenridge, an expert on child protection in sport (OBE).
  
• Legal adviser to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre Hugh Davies (OBE).
  
• Janet Digby-Baker, chief executive of the Time for Children fostering agency (OBE).
  
• Psychiatrist Dr Lesley Hewson, former chair of the government’s National Advisory Council for Children’s Mental Health and Psychological Wellbeing (OBE).
  
• Dr Ian McPherson, former director of the National Institute for Mental Health in the Department of Health (OBE).
  
• Fionnuala McAndrew, director of children and executive director for social work at Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Board (OBE).
  
• Madeline Starr, head of innovation at Carers UK (MBE).

Related articles

New Year Honours List recognises social work professionals