Branworth is led by Dan Martin.
Dan is a child protection expert. He qualified as a social worker through Frontline and began his career with Manchester City Council before managing children’s social care programmes at the National Children’s Bureau, which incorporates the Council for Disabled Children. There, he worked with government to implement two pieces of legislation: the 2017 Children and Social Work Act; and the 2014 reforms to the framework for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
More recently he was a principal child protection social worker (and subsequently consultant social worker) in Hammersmith and Fulham. During the pandemic, Dan was a founding member of a new representative body, the Children’s Social Work Collective, and co-ordinated press coverage and engagement with policy-makers. Since 2022, he has worked in the emergency duty team for the tri-borough service in west London.
Dan is trained to foundation level in systemic family therapy, completed the Mentalization-Based Treatment with Families programme at the Anna Freud Centre, and his MSc was based on a piece of action research into motivational interviewing. He has lectured to students on both the Step up to Social Work and Frontline courses.
In 2024, Dan was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to examine the approach to care proceedings in New York and Washington DC and apply lessons from both states to improve practice in the UK.
Before social work, Dan began his professional life with Perrett Laver, latterly as head of knowledge management, where he advised universities, NHS foundation trusts, and charities on executive and non-executive appointments. His first degree is from the London School of Economics, where he was a governor for two terms, and he is currently studying towards the graduate diploma in law at City, University of London, as an Inner Temple exhibition scholar.