Derick Stafford, who died on 14th January 2003 was a great man.

His death did not hit the headlines nationally, because he was not a national politician like Roy Jenkins, nor was he well-known as a pop star like Maurice Gibbs, both of whom died not long before him. But it was the fact that he affected the lives of many people and the sort of person he was that made Derick great.

And he was a good man. We see so much that is unpleasant or bad in the media, and the good often gets overlooked, but Derick was a truly good man.

Derick was born in 1930 in Kirkheaton, near Huddersfield, and he was therefore a Yorkshireman. He had all the good characteristics of a Yorkshireman, - such as the ability to talk straight to people, the solidness, the reliability, the perseverance, the bluntness and the humour, - but none of the bad ones.

He came from a Methodist background, attending the local chapel, and throughout his life he remained active in church work. Derick trained as a teacher in Huddersfield at the college which is now Huddersfield University. He also got his Certificate from the Institute of Builders, as he had specialised in woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing.

Following National Service in the Air Force, Derick’s first job was at Batley Banksfield School, which is now closed. He faced a crisis in the classroom on his first day at work. He thought he was in trouble, but he ended up with a reputation for coping effectively with children who misbehaved, and it was a reputation he never lost.

Derick’s second job was at Batley High School for Boys, which was then one of the country’s first comprehensive schools. It was while he was there that he saw an advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement mentioning Aycliffe School in County Durham. He applied and got a job as Teacher in the Classifying School.

Professionally, for Derick it meant a move out of ordinary teaching to working with young offenders. Aycliffe was an approved school for offenders sent by the courts and Derick worked in the Classifying School where the boys’ needs were assessed, and decisions were taken about their placements.

He came into his element there. He had a special sympathy for the lads who had been in trouble. He could communicate with them. They trusted him, and he was absolutely straight with them. He was never conned by a lad. He never lost control of a situation. If anyone was faced with a lad who was playing up and making trouble, Derick could sort him out. As Roger Singleton noted, he always took a particular interest in the boy who was struggling to cope, who needed that additional bit of protection or who would too easily pass unnoticed. He never lost his temper, though he was an expert at blustering and making a bit of a scene to impress the boys.

It is these characteristics which showed Derick to be a truly great man. Looking back on that time, there were people in childcare working with delinquents who did a reasonable job, there were some people who did a poor job, and there were some who have featured in the scandals that have since hit the headlines and who did a bad job.

But Derick was one of the best. It was difficult, challenging work, and he did a brilliant job in a field which does not attract public fame. People like Derick were committed and worked hard for the job satisfaction, because their heart was in it, because they could make a difference to the lives of losers.

The people who recognised the quality of Derick’s work were those who worked with him. They knew the difficulty of the work and could recognise quality.

Colleagues relied on him, and his friendliness, humour and dependability was a support to many of his colleagues. He was known as “the overall floater” because of his ability to fit in and help out anywhere in the School. He used to pop in if people needed support, and in his free time he took part in activities such as football on the red pitch.

Griff Jones wrote, “I knew him as a completely reliable colleague, always concerned to reduce unhappiness, carrying with him the light of humour. Through all his progress in responsibility, he avoided the arrogance which so often contaminates those in top jobs”.

He was a man who got on with everybody. John Heptinstall noted that most people manage to upset somebody, but Derick didn’t have an enemy, and it was all down to his approach, easy-going and friendly, always ready to have a good laugh at people’s daftness, but not standing nonsense.

While he was at Aycliffe he chaired the Aycliffe Carnival Committee for several years, quite a big job, requiring a lot of teamwork and co-operation. It might have surprised the people of Newton Aycliffe to know that the young men who kept order as stewards at the Carnival were young offenders from across the road.

Derick undertook post-qualifying training at London University and was promoted to be the Deputy Head in the Classifying School at Aycliffe. Then in 1976 he moved to work with John and Jenny Richmond at Boyle’s Court Observation and Assessment Centre in Brentwood in Essex. After a period as Deputy he took over the running of the Centre. Next he was asked to run a Community Home with Education called Hollycroft, which was then closed, so he moved round, working in a variety of establishments where the Social Services Department had problems and needed someone reliable.

However, it was also at this time in the early 1980s that Derick faced his first serious illness, and he spent some time in Broomfield Hospital with thrombosis. Derick retired early, and after a while he and his wife, Enid, decided to move north to be closer to the family. It was about five years ago that Derick suffered a stroke which was the beginning of his recent series of illnesses. It is a credit to his toughness that he coped with his ailments so well.

“He was a big man with a big heart”, as Jess and John, his neighbours, put it. “He was one of life’s gentlemen, with warmth and friendship that emanated from a good soul”. Unlike the eminent people whose obituaries one usually reads in newspapers, Derick wrote no books, he invented nothing, he did not get the Nobel Peace Prize, he did not make a lot of money or hit the headlines. He devoted his working life to the needs of children and young people, helping them cope with their problems and caring for them. This tribute recognises what he did as a real achievement.

In one sense, Derick was only typical of thousands of people who have worked with children and whose efforts have not achieved national recognition. Occasionally we pay tribute to the army of people who are not famous, for example in the tomb of the unknown soldier or Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

But each one of the people commemorated in this way was an individual. Each one made his or her contribution and each one had his or her particular qualities. Not one of them was actually typical. Nor was Derick. Like all of the other childcare workers whose labours have not achieved public recognition, Derick was a special person in his own right. Above all, he was a great and truly good man.