Katherine Russell (social worker)

Katherine Frances Russell OBE (née Stewart; 6 April 1909 – 9 July 1998) was an English social worker and university teacher. She began working as a volunteer for the Time and Talents settlement in Bermondsey and supported families affected by illness, poverty, slum housing and overcrowding. Russell was employed as the community service organiser on Lewisham's Honor Oak housing estate in 1937 and became the warden of the mixed-sex Archers Youth Centre in Southampton during the Second World War. She was appointed the chief administrator of five one-year emergency courses run by the Institute of Almoners in 1945 before becoming a practical work organiser and then as a senior lecturer of the London School of Economics (her alma mater) from 1949 to 1973. Russell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1976.