Nigel Elliott

Nigel Elliott, who died on 9^th February this year, at the age of 73, was highly respected in the social work profession. Throughout his career in probation and social work education, he endeared himself through his conscientious, warm, balanced and thoughtful approach.

He came into social work after studying history at Oxford, where he followed his first degree with an MLitt research dissertation on Seventeenth Century Catholic Recusants in Essex (1972–76). His social work training was at Exeter, where he was inspired by Bill Jordan and Jean Packman; he retained a close affinity with their approach to social work. He began his career in probation in 1978, when this was firmly relationship based and often psychodynamically oriented. As he would like to recall, Nigel and his colleagues in North East London Probation were all trained – en masse – on Joanne Silove’s distinctively rigorous Role of Assessment training at the Tavistock Clinic.

In 1989, he began teaching on the CQSW – about to become DipSW – social work courses in Croydon College, where he and I shared an office, the beginning of an enduring friendship. At the time I expected Nigel would continue to develop his career within social work education, but when Probation began to decouple from social work training, he chose to return to practice, in 1995. He was deeply critical of the changes that led the reconfiguration of Probation as a correctional service. Yet it was quite typical that he would choose to be, in this way, on the front line, to experience what these changes were really like, close up and first-hand. For the following six years he was in turn practitioner, manager and trainer within the rapidly changing Probation Service. In this period he also completed the Advanced Award and a management diploma, and whilst doing so, he had the fruitful thought that the process of learning through portfolio creation was, in effect, an opportunity for action research. In 2001, he returned to social work education as Principal Lecturer at Kingston University to lead the social work courses until his retirement in 2010. He then increased his involvement with JSWP and GAPS, and he has been highly valued for his contributions as Treasurer of GAPS, member of the Editorial Board and Book Review Editor.

Nigel’s career thus involved, in his own words, ‘criss-crossing between boundaries, profiting from different perspectives, and cumulatively building on these diverse experiences’ (2006, p. 1). Underpinning these excursions was his profound commitment to understanding the practice world he inhabited, as it changed over time and to make sense of the emotional and intellectual contexts in which he worked. He wrote methodically about these experiences and gathered up 20 years’ of these outputs into his PhD by publication in 2006, Charting the Practicum: A Journey in Probation and Social Work; he was delighted to have been supervised by Olive Stevenson. His commentary, a tour de force, became the basis for his article, published in JSWP, The global vortex: social welfare in a networked world (2008).

Rereading this article and his PhD Commentary, I realised anew how he had somehow made sense of so much apparently disparate detail of practice and educating experience, which he organised into a framework of criteria for reflective practice. He believed very deeply in the principle of academic and professional freedom, and he drew on Isaiah Berlin’s thinking about positive and negative freedom, to assert the importance of independent professional and academic thought and activity. This was Nigel’s riposte to the demise of professional independence within a bureaucratised Probation, in particular, and the managerialist approach to social work, in general. He sustained a more hopeful vision for improvement, through what he called moral agency that could sustain curiosity, development and a space for professional judgement and discretion.

It can be argued that his writing deserves greater recognition, though his Global Vortex article is cited internationally, but his contribution was much more than this, including his influence on, and benefits for, countless students and service users. Being in Nigel’s company always led quickly to an awareness of how he took others’ concerns seriously, as well as his erudition, which he wore lightly, and the depth of his integrity; he could be understated; he did not seek glamour.

In retirement Nigel returned to the study of local history, immersing himself with the Bourne Society in the archive of the Byron family of Coulsdon. From this he wrote a lavishly illustrated and beautifully described monograph, The Byrons of Coulsdon: Abroad and at Home (Elliott, 2020). Less than a month before he died he sent me a copy of a supplementary publication describing the Byron family’s visits to Olden, Nordfjord, and their encounters with inter alia Kaiser Wilhelm II

Nigel had an unflagging capacity to be deeply involved in whatever he was working on, and thinking about, always with his characteristic conscientious diligence and thoughtfulness, along with a wry, vibrant sense of humour. Outside work he was devoted to his family; he enjoyed travelling, especially to Greece and the Middle East, often in search of art or history. He and I enjoyed many visits to the Tate, always followed by most enjoyable conversations over pizza and a beer. He is survived by his wife, Diane, son, David, daughter-in-law, Naomi, and grandson, Leo.