My friend Tom White, who has died aged 93, was director of social services at Coventry city council in the 1970s and 80s, before becoming chief executive of the National Children’s Home (NCH), where he spent more than a decade until his retirement.
When Tom first arrived at the NCH in 1985 it was running 128 projects on a budget of just over £22m; by 1996, it had changed its name to NCH Action for Children, and its spending had increased to £70m across 270 programmes, with the number of children it helped having increased fivefold.
More importantly, however, Tom had helped to move the charity away from its image of providing children’s homes (most of which have now closed) towards a wider range of preventative service for children and families within the community.
Tom was born in Ystradgynlais in south Wales to Walter, a coalminer, and Annie (nee Williams), a parlour maid and cook. He went to the local Maesydderwen grammar school before gaining a social science diploma from Swansea University and then a social work qualification at the London School of Economics in 1957.
Tom’s first job was as a childcare office at Devon county council. He moved back to Wales in 1961 as deputy children’s officer with Monmouthshire county council.
From 1965 to 1970 he was deputy children’s officer at Lancashire county council, moving to Coventry in the wake of the 1968 Seebohm Report, which recommended the amalgamation of council welfare services for children, older people and people with mental health issues. At Coventry he was appointed the council’s first director of social services, remaining there until his move to the NCH, initially as director of social work before rising to be its principal and then chief executive.
He and I first met in a professional capacity in 1979, when Tom, as president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, helped me when I was setting up Panahghar, a domestic violence refuge for Asian women in Coventry. A large section of the Asian community was opposed to the idea, but Tom took my side and helped the project get off the ground, despite attempts to block it.
He retired from the NCH/Action for Children in 1996 and from then until 2004 he was a Labour councillor on Coventry city council, becoming a member of its first ever community wellbeing cabinet, responsible for elderly and disabled people as well as housing and equality issues.
As a young man Tom had been chair of the Labour League of Youth (now known as Young Labour) before focusing on social work, and he met Eileen Moore, a history teache, whom he married in 1956, when they were both on its national committee.
Eileen died in 2024. He is survived by two daughters, Viv and Ceri, four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. His son, David, died in a car accident in 1972.
