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.
