Clever, sensible, generous and glamorous – BASW founding member dies
Janie Thomas, one of the leading social workers behind the creation of BASW in 1970, has died aged 95.
Remembered as an “influential and “glamorous” role model by friends and colleagues, Janie’s impact on the profession has been wide-reaching.
Starting her career in the 1950s as an almoner, she worked at London’s St George’s hospital and then switched to children and families services at London County Council.
In the mid-1960s she became a lecturer in social work at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she previously did her training.
While lecturing at the LSE she took up presidency of the Association of Child Care Officers, a role for which she was made an MBE in 1969.
The following year she played a key part in the creation of BASW out of seven organisations representing social work and later become its president.
During a varied career she worked for the International Refugee Organisation in Paris and lectured at the Hong Kong Polytechnic. She contributed to the development of foster care in Hong Kong, which became the subject of her PhD at Sussex University.
Friends and colleagues paid tribute to Janie.
BASW's chair Julia Ross said: "She was an outstanding leader for social work. I remember well her contribution to the newly shaping BASW in the early 1970s. There is no doubt that she helped to lay the strong foundations which we now build for social work in the future.”
Dame Moira Gibb, who led the 2017 review into the abuses of Peter Ball in the Church of England, said: “Janie was a role model for me. I was fairly recently arrived in London when she took me under her wing in BASW.
“Most importantly, from my point of view, she invited me to take up her lecturing role at LSE for a term while she was in Hong Kong. She was deeply sensible, clever, generous and as I remember it amazingly glamorous. I wanted to be her.”
June Thoburn, emeritus professor of social work at the University of East Anglia, said: “I am fortunate to have known Janie for over 60 years.
“As a very creative senior childcare officer in Tower Hamlets in 1962, she was a practice teacher and provided lively classes to my childcare officer course at Oxford on preventive family social work brought in by Sec 1 of the 1963 Act.”
John Cypher, general secretary of BASW in the early 80s, said: “From her time in the Association of Child Care Officers and then into the founding of BASW Janie had a formidable and well-deserved reputation.
"Supported by other childcare focused members, she played an important part in the generalist/specialist practice debates within BASW and in the developing social services departments.
“Undoubtedly in the BASW times I knew, Janie was one of the great and influential social work leaders.”
Janie is survived by her son Peter and grandson, Jake.
