My mother, Margot Garlick, who has died aged 88, enjoyed a long and successful career in social services, mostly working for Croydon council. She rose to be a team manager in Purley and then area officer for Surrey county council in the New Addington area of Croydon – a challenging place to work due to the large number of families experiencing difficulties.
To her work colleagues she was a warm and caring manager, admired and respected for her dedication to work but also for the attention she paid to the wellbeing of those who worked with her, many of whom became close family friends.
Margot was born in Northallerton in North Yorkshire, to Bill Garlick, who ran a radio and TV repair business in the High Street, and his wife, Edith (nee Powell). After leaving Northallerton grammar school with a higher school certificate she graduated in 1953 from Nottingham University with a degree in social administration and began her career in residential children’s care in Nottingham. She moved to London in 1955 to qualify as a child care officer at the London School of Economics, where she met her future husband, Dick – whose surname was, coincidentally, the same as her own. They married in 1958.
Margot started work as a child care officer in Slough, Berkshire, and then, after a spell working in Hounslow from 1966 to 1968, relocated to the Croydon area, where she put her social work career to one side for several years so she could help Dick establish his financial services public relations business.
She restarted her career in 1974 in Purley and retired in 1995 as an area officer. She then took up a part-time role as an independent complaints investigator at Berkshire county council, and was also an arbitrator on an appeals panel examining complaints made by social services clients against Surrey county council.
Margot was always interested in people and went out of her way to help friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours – anyone who was in need. She lived out her belief that “to have a friend, you have to be a friend”.
Dick died in 2003 and their son Colin died in 2014. She is survived by my younger brother, Nicholas, and me.
