Newly Qualified Children’s Social Worker of the Year

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Dean stood out to the judges as someone who is “tenacious, creative and passionate”.

He was nominated for his astounding work with a terminally ill woman from Africa and her seven-year-old child, who were placed in Sheffield by the National Asylum Support Service.

Dean worked tirelessly to overcome the challenges he faced in securing adequate housing and support services for the family. He visited the mother in hospital many times, and assisted her to write a will expressing her last wishes and a goodbye letter to her child two days before she died, as well as helping to arrange the funeral. He did all this alongside providing emotional support to the child and navigating them through loss, a court order and care proceedings.

The judge in the case praised Dean’s work, and his manager said that in her career she had “never seen a social worker have such a positive impact as on the case described within this nomination”. She recalled how at the mother’s funeral, the first thing the child did was run to Dean and jump into his arms, which she said was “powerful evidence” of all he had achieved.