Melanie Phillips, who has died aged 64 of cancer, was one of the cadre of Black, Asian and minority ethnic people who trained as social workers in the early 1980s and joined the battle to protect Black and Asian children, and improve support to their families.
Melanie was driven by the shocking ineptitude of social workers revealed in the inquiries into deaths of Black children such as Jasmine Beckford and Tyra Henry. In her early days as a “generic social worker” in Walthamstow, London, and then as part of a specialist team in Newham, she fought to implement practice that challenged the prevailing racist stereotypes that informed investigations and assessments.
In contributions to publications such as The Child Protection Handbook (1995), Micro-Commissioning: A Way Forward for Child Protection? (1995) and The Child’s World (2009), Melanie wrote about the persistence of the view that Caribbean mothers were aggressive and neglectful, and that Asian mothers were passive and unable to protect their children. She noted that when the differing experience of Black and Asian families was discussed with colleagues and managers, it almost always led to a focus on culture as an explanation, with a reluctance to acknowledge or accept that racism played any part.
Melanie’s reflective approach, and her clear thinking of how social work practice needed to change to ensure Black and Asian children would be protected better, saw her move into training, first at Hackney and then as a training manager for Haringey. She then carved out a career in implementing best practice, contributing to various local and national initiatives. For example, she was part of the social work improvement team in Rotherham that followed the 2013 inquiry into child sexual exploitation.
Melanie was born in Barnet, London, the daughter of Delyse, an office manager, and Hilton Phillips, an aeronautical engineer. The family moved to Lincolnshire, where Melanie attended local schools in Brigg; she went on to train as a social worker at South Bank University in London before joining the Walthamstow social work department, later moving to Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Haringey.
I worked with Melanie a number of times over the past 30 years, including recently on a project for the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. It was a source of some amusement to Melanie that I once had to assure an interviewer that the person we were working with was not “that Melanie Phillips”. It was her commitment to the cause that sustained Melanie and those who worked with her. She was a singularly insightful colleague who really did make a difference.
Melanie is survived by her husband, Stuart Johnson, whom she married in 2001, and their children, Nila and Rohan, her mother and her brother, Tim.