A Tribute to Ruben Martin, Series Editor, Social Work Skills in Practice, Open University Press
Ruben was an Emeritus Fellow in the social work team at the University of Kent. He worked for the University since 2002/03 playing a key role in developing and delivering the - then new - BA in Social Work. Before that he was a social work lecturer at Mid Kent College where he taught on the Diploma in Social Work course for a number of years. He had a background in probation work and training and development work for the Salvation Army.
Although he retired from full-time employment in 2010 he continued to contribute regular teaching and practice related support to students until his untimely death on August 8th 2021. Ruben was a core member of the social work team, a ‘foundation’ in many ways to the portfolio of social work programmes at the University. To quote a colleague, ‘It’s hard to articulate Ruben’s significance for our team and for the wider University. Without his commitment and hard work there would quite simply not have been any social work programmes at Kent. People like me benefited very much from his hard work, and many other developments and success stories - such as the Centre for Child Protection - hinged on his efforts and his sheer dedication and loyalty to the social work profession’.
Ruben dedicated his academic career to high standards, fairness, justice and kindness. He contributed to a wide range of teaching, student support roles and administrative tasks. Respect and admiration for Ruben extended beyond the academic team and included social workers, social work managers and ex and current students. Ruben was particularly committed to ensuring that students ‘got a fair and high quality service’; he worked tirelessly to promote student wellbeing and supported them to achieve their best. He was widely regarded as gentle, kind, engaging, calm, collegiate and incredibly wise; he was a touchstone for social work as an academic subject and a professional practice.
Ruben was also a scholar. One of his main achievements was being Co-Editor of a successful Open University Press/McGraw Hill book series on Social Work Skills (since 2012). He not only oversaw the development of the series (with me), engaged with potential authors and reviewed drafts of books he also authored two books in the series himself: Teamworking Skills for Social Workers (2013) & Professional Writing Skills for Social Workers (2015, 2nd Edition 2021, with Louise Frith).
Ruben leaves his wife Kay and daughter Janet; he is very sorely missed by his family and his many friends and colleagues.
Ruben Martin's titles are available on our website; click on the cover images for more information.
