Bolton MBC chief executive Tony Oakman is a northerner by choice, rather than birth - and it's the accent that gives him away. Born and brought up in Hackney by a single mum, he says: 'I didn't do as well at school as I should have done, so I decided to go to university at Lancashire.'It was his first taste of the North - and where he met his wife. He left with a history degree and no notion of what he would do, but an idea that he wanted to 'put something back'.'1 worked in a range of jobs, a nursing assistant on a secure ward...and then I went back to do social work as a post graduate.' It was in social work, at Nottinghamshire, that he started his local government career.Nottinghamshire was piloting different ways of working with children with disabilities, with budgets attached to casework giving social workers the flexibility to respond to the needs of the people they were working with.
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