My sister-in-law Marion Davis, who has died aged 67 from problems related to Parkinson’s illness, was a social employee and a passionate advocate for youngsters’s companies. She argued that “the voice and the wants of the kid … should all the time be heard”.
Her concern for youngsters’s wellbeing was pivotal when she was appointed vice-president after which president of the Affiliation of Administrators of Kids’s Companies from 2009 to 2011, and as a member of the knowledgeable reference group who labored on the Munro overview of kid safety in 2011.
Her clear-eyed evaluation made her an efficient chair of a severe case overview into the loss of life of a six-year-old woman within the London borough of Sutton in 2013, and adviser to a Home of Commons schooling choose committee that reported on the psychological well being and wellbeing of “looked-after” kids in 2015.
She later turned a trustee of the charity Kids and Households Throughout Borders. She was appointed CBE in 2012.
Born in Croydon, south London, Marion was the daughter of Peter Davis, a amount surveyor, and Joan (nee Lambert), a PA. After successful a scholarship to Croydon highschool, she confounded the expectations of her dad and mom by leaving and securing a submit within the voluntary sector in Camden, north London. There, she met her companion, Ian Burdett, and was decided to change into a social employee.
After she had taken a level in psychology and sociology at Metropolis, College of London in 1978, after which a certificates of qualification in social work on the London Faculty of Economics, Marion’s first submit was in Purbeck, Dorset, working as a basic social employee from 1982 and later in adoption and fostering till 1993.
From Dorset, she went to South Hams, Devon, in 1993, then turned head of companies for youngsters and households in Plymouth in 1997, earlier than a transfer to Warwickshire in 2003 as director of social companies and later director of youngsters’s companies. Marion ensured that the division gained a status for excellence.
Marion and Ian entered a civil partnership in 2020, having been collectively for 40 years. In retirement she had hoped to make use of her expertise to work with a kids’s charity in India. Nevertheless, with diminishing power following the onset of Parkinson’s, Marion gave up her charity trusteeships and returned to Dorset.
She is survived by Ian and her brother, Martin.
