Office of the Chief Social Worker: new appointees start

Isabelle Trowler, Chief Social Worker for Children and Families, and Lyn Romeo, Chief Social Worker for Adults, started in September.

Isabelle Trowler and Lyn Romeo started their new roles, in the Department for Education and the Department of Health, on 2 September 2013 and will work collaboratively out of the Office of the Chief Social Worker to:

• support and challenge the profession to ensure that children and adults get the best possible help from social workers
• provide independent expert advice to ministers on social work reform and the contribution of social work and social workers to policy implementation more generally
• provide leadership and work with key leaders in the profession and wider sector to drive forward the improvement and reform programme for social work
• challenge weak practice to achieve decisive improvements in the quality of social work
• provide leadership to the network of principal social workers to improve practice and influence national policy making and delivery

Chief Social Worker for Children and Families Isabelle Trowler

Isabelle Trowler qualified as a social worker from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1996. She has worked within the voluntary and statutory sectors both in education and social care settings, and in a variety of practice and leadership roles.

Over the last 7 years, initially as the Assistant Director of Children’s Social Care in Hackney and later as Director of Morning Lane Associates. She co-founded a new model of delivering child and family social work in the UK called ‘Reclaiming Social Work’ and more commonly referred to as ‘Hackney model’. She also advised Eileen Munro’s review of child protection in England about the redesign of children and families social work.

Chief Social Worker for Adults Lyn Romeo

Lyn Romeo qualified as a social worker from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 1978. She has worked in health and statutory sectors in a variety of practice, leadership, inspection and management roles.

Previously, Lyn worked as the Assistant Director for Adult Social Care in the London Borough of Camden, an inspector with the Social Services Inspectorate, and for over 20 years worked in Yorkshire as both a field social worker and in a variety of management roles across children and adults.

Over the last 8 years, she led and managed adult social care services, joint commissioning arrangements with the local clinical commissioning group and integrated service provision with the local mental health, learning disability and primary care services.