Sybil Francis was born in 1914 (UWI tribute; the Observer found her a year short of 100 in May 2013). She attended Wolmer’s Girls’ School.

She was among the first Jamaicans to take a formal social-work qualification: a two-year Certificate in Social Sciences and Administration at the London School of Economics in 1946, on a Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship (UWI). While in England she spent three years at the BBC on Girl about Town, interviewing Jamaicans. The Observer has her in government service from 1940 to 1962, including as assistant permanent secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Social Welfare from 1958 to 1962.

In 1962 she joined the University of the West Indies Department of Extra Mural Studies as the first tutor — UWI later says first head — of the Social Welfare Training Centre. She built the four-month Principles and Practice of Social Work course used across the region, and the units that became the Caribbean Child Development Centre (1972) and the Woman and Development Unit (1977). She took UWI into the International Association of Schools of Social Work and served as an IASSW vice-president. IASSW also records her on independent Jamaica’s 1963 UN delegation.

She formally retired at the end of the 1980/81 academic year and stayed on as consultant to the vice-chancellor for about ten years. NACASSW gave her its first distinguished-service award in 1999. The Sybil Francis Seminar Room at UWI was named in 2004. IASSW (11 June 2020) says she died at home on 3 June 2020, aged 106. A Gleaner 10 June 2020 snippet says 30 May. Both dates are on the record.

Sources

Sources: Jamaica Observer, Sybil Francis, a social worker extraordinaire, 25 May 2013; UWI Global Campus, A Tribute to Sybil Francis, after 2014; IASSW, The passing of a former social work leader, 11 June 2020.