Victoria Hylton-Hall is a Service Manager with Sheffield City Council’s Independent Reviewing Service. We spoke to her about an unconventional route into social work, the importance of lived experience, and why, after 18 years, the profession still humbles her every day.
A surprising starting point
Victoria’s path into social work is not one she could have predicted. After leaving school, she trained as an apprentice funeral director and later became a mortuary technician, working for Sheffield City Council’s coroner’s court. It was in that role, supporting bereaved families at the most difficult moments of their lives, that a chance comment planted a seed.
“I was speaking to this one bereaved mum, and we were having a conversation. She said to me, you just calmed me so much. She said,”I don’t know why you don’t do social work!” To be honest with you, I’d never really thought about anything like that.”
A significant personal loss a few months later led Victoria to reflect on her future, and that conversation came back to her. She sought out work experience, became a family support worker, completed an access course at college and went on to study for her social work degree at Sheffield Hallam University.
Knowing she wanted to work with children and families, Victoria continued to invest in her professional development throughout her career, completing a Master’s degree in professional practice with children and families, a postgraduate qualification in leadership and management, and qualifying as a practice educator. She is keen to emphasise, however, that academic foundations only go so far.
“We all know social work, don’t we? It’s not just learned, it’s also a lived experience. You have to have that lived experience.”
A breadth of experience
From her first role in a child in need team, Victoria has worked across an impressive range of services, including child protection, court work, adoption, a pre-birth assessment team working with expectant mothers, children with disabilities, hospital social work, and multi-agency services. This variety, she says, has given her a realistic and grounded understanding of the profession.
After several years as an advanced social work practitioner, it was her manager who first suggested she consider moving into management, around 12 years ago. Victoria spent a decade as a Senior Fieldwork Manager, before stepping up to her current role as Service Manager approximately two years ago. She is clear that there is no single right direction for a social work career.
“There’s a discussion, isn’t there, in social work, about where can you go. People think you either can go up or you can go sideways. And I don’t think about it like that. I think it’s what’s right for you as an individual and how you’ve seen your social work journey or career and wherever that takes you.”
What’s it like to manage the Independent Reviewing Service?
Victoria leads Sheffield’s Independent Reviewing Service, a team of 13 Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) who are independent of the local authority and whose work focuses on children in care. The IROs oversee care plans for children in foster and residential placements, hold regular visits with young people, liaise with professionals and parents, and chair looked-after children reviews, holding the local authority to account to ensure children’s needs are being met.
As Service Manager, Victoria’s role combines strategic leadership with operational oversight, with a particular focus on quality assurance. A typical day might include chairing a looked-after children review, back-to-back supervisions with IROs, and a series of meetings with service managers from other areas, as well as attending a cross-authority anti-racist planning meeting. Email invariably has to wait until the evening.
One of the most rewarding aspects of the role, Victoria says, is the ability to genuinely interrogate what is and is not working for children in care, something she had less opportunity to do in the fast-paced environment of frontline management.
“In this role, you have much more time to look and think, because you are challenging the Local Authority if you’re not in agreement with a plan. But you’re also calling out the good practice of social workers. You can see all the good work that is there as well.”
The role also brings its challenges. As an independent service operating within the local authority, conversations with social workers and managers about care plans can be delicate, particularly when a formal challenge to a plan is required.
“Social workers work really, really hard. I think there is always the challenge around ensuring they understand that our role isn’t about judgement. It’s about constructive criticism in terms of: are we doing the best that we can for this child or young person?”
Though the day-to-day contact with children and young people is less frequent than in her previous roles, Victoria described a moment during a recent looked-after children review as a reminder of why that work still matters deeply. Having chaired the review on behalf of an absent IRO, she stayed behind to chat with the young person, a teenager with aspirations to pursue a plumbing apprenticeship.
“It was just really nice to actually meet a young person, because in my day-to-day role as a service manager, that doesn’t happen quite as often. So that was really good.”
Victoria is also quick to acknowledge that the impact of her role extends beyond individual interactions. Across 18 years and a wide range of services, she has developed a strong understanding of the pressures faced by families, professionals, funding bodies and organisations alike. That perspective, she says, only reinforces her belief in the importance of what social workers do.
“I’ve seen how good practice can change lives. Social work can be very demanding. But it’s also very rewarding.”
Advice for aspiring social workers
Victoria’s advice for anyone considering a career in social work centres on the value of lived experience, not necessarily years of it, but a grounded, realistic understanding of what the work involves before stepping through the door.
“Before you think about it, or when you’re on your social work course, go and get some work experience, as a support worker, whatever it is. Try and find some experience where you’re coming into your degree, you’re coming into the social work world, and you have got a realistic idea of what it means. Not just to be a social worker, but to understand that you, as a person, are going to be in people’s lives when perhaps they don’t want you there, or perhaps when they do.”
She also highlights resilience as essential, not as a reason to become emotionally detached, but as the quality that allows you to keep going when the work is hard.
“You’re going to get a door slammed in your face. You’re going to get told no, they don’t want our services. So I think it’s about being resilient as well. You have to take the knocks on the chin, but remember what you’re doing it for.”
Based on her time in the profession, would she recommend it to others?
“Oh, yes! It still humbles me to this day and it’s become part of who I am. There are some really sad things in this job, and children are going through so much trauma. But these kids that we see, that we work with, they’ve got so much resilience, so much potential. For me, it’s humbling that I can just play a small part in that. That’s what keeps me here.”
Seeing space to grow in Sheffield
Victoria is deeply invested in Sheffield, the city she lives in and loves, and has no plans to leave. She sees real ambition as entirely compatible with staying put, and is not ruling out future progression to assistant director or director level. For now, though, she is focused on doing the job she has well and on supporting the next generation of social workers, something she cares about as a qualified practice educator.
“I like to aim high. So if it means assistant director, director one day, who knows? You never say never. After 18 years, social work still challenges me. It still matters deeply to me what we can do as social workers. It’s a profession that does demand resilience, reflection and integrity. But I think it’s a real privilege making a difference in people’s lives. So I always keep that in mind.”
As for why children’s social work matters, Victoria’s answer is characteristically direct:
“Because every child matters. And that sounds really corny, but that is at the heart of it. The social work matters because the children matter.”