IMPACT was delighted to be part of England’s Social Worker of the Year Awards (SWYA) 2026, marking its 20th anniversary with a special ceremony in the House of Commons.
IMPACT’s Jon Glasby is a trustee of SWYA, and was proud to give out the Lifetime Achievement award, as well as the award for Practitioner-led Research.
The former was won by Dave Fry from Croydon Council, who was also the joint winner of the overall ‘Social Worker of the Year Award’ (chosen by the trustees from among all the 2026 winners). As the SWYA book of winners explains:
“Dave Fry devoted more than 50 years to social work, beginning as an 18-year-old residential social worker in 1975 and retiring in January 2026. He died just weeks later, leaving a career that had taken him from children’s homes and youth justice to director-level leadership, corporate parenting, fostering and services for young people leaving care.
Whatever the job title, the thread running through Dave’s career was the same: listen to children and make the system work around their lives. In Croydon, he transformed a placement service into a relational ‘home finding’ service and developed the council’s Sufficiency Strategy with young people. He insisted that care-experienced young people were involved throughout the creation of new children’s homes; Precious House, designed and named with young people, opened the day after he died…
His own advice summed up the approach that shaped five decades of work: be kind, be inquisitive and keep children’s needs and voices at the centre…
Dave died shortly after retiring in 2026. His legacy is not simply more than five decades of achievement, but the people, practice and services he changed along the way and his unwavering conviction that social work should always start with listening to children.”
IMPACT helped to design the practitioner-researcher award, recognising the contributions of colleagues who seek to operate across the practice-research boundary and who work tirelessly to build more of a research culture in local services. They carry out their own research, support others to get involved and help make evidence-informed improvements to care and support. This year’s award was once again sponsored by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) – and Jon was delighted to make the award on their behalf in his dual role as SWYA Trustee and chair of the NIHR Academy’s local authority committee (which provides funding for practitioner-researchers in local government, social care and public health to undertake PhDs).
This year’s award was won by Dr Philip Archard:
“While working in CAMHS [child and adolescent mental health services], Dr Archard led the introduction and evaluation of a group intervention for foster carers and adoptive parents. The research identified high levels of caregiver stress and directly informed how the intervention was adapted for families using the service. He also led research into remote CAMHS care during the pandemic, helping local services understand when hybrid care could work – and where video appointments were not the answer for socially vulnerable young people.
Dr Archard has gone on to build research capacity in others. In less than three years at the Tavistock he supervised eight doctoral students to completion and established the Practice Research in Child Welfare Lab, bringing together doctoral researchers, practitioners and people with lived experience.
His collaborators describe him as someone who makes research useful rather than remote: helping practitioners ask questions from practice, investigate them rigorously and turn the findings back into better services.”
The Awards exist to celebrate courageous social work, promoting a vision of the profession which advocates for social justice and supports people to live full and joyful lives. Spending time with so many wonderful social workers and celebrating the difference they make was a privilege, and we look forward to the next 20 years and beyond.
