Grace Jackson, who has died aged 92, was an outstanding social worker who became director of the London Boroughs Training Committee, which educated social workers in the capital.
Grace was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), to Reuben Jackson, a prison governor in the colonial civil service, and his wife, Doris (nee Davison). In 1947 Grace came to Britain on her own so that she could study at the Edinburgh School of Chiropody. She practised chiropody for some years in Liverpool, Bristol and Canterbury, but in the 1950s was sponsored by the Home Office to become a probation officer. We met in 1956, and remained friends from then onwards.
After studying social science at the London School of Economics, Grace took up her first post as a probation officer in Watford, Hertfordshire, in 1955. In 1957 she took a further course at the LSE to become a psychiatric social worker, joining the Greater London council as a social work tutor in the department that ran in-house short courses across London. This department became the London Boroughs Training Committee and she eventually became its director, holding the post until she retired in 1986.
Grace was appointed OBE for services to social work and went on to enjoy a busy retirement, mostly in the service of local communities in and around her home in Folkestone, Kent, where she had bought a home with two friends, Phyllis Angel, a social worker, and Sylvia Stewart, a former nurse.
In Kent she was secretary of the Dover Branch of the Workers’ Educational Association, was elected a councillor in Denton with Wootton parish council, and was a governor of Dover grammar school for girls. When she was not involved in community work she travelled extensively across the US.
She is survived by her cousin, Jennifer.
