John Deakins was trained as a social worker at the University of Bristol in England, and at the University of Chicago in the United States. In England he was initially involved in the rehabilitation of refugees expelled from Egypt at the time of the 1956 Suez war, and then worked for three years with the East London Family Service Unit, an agency working intensively with multiple- problem families. In the United States he worked for six years with clients of the Jewish Family and Community Services in different locations in Chicago. His clients have primarily been families struggling to deal with both external pressures and internal crises, but he has also worked with the mentally ill, juvenile offenders, disturbed and physically injured children, and survivors of the holocaust. He and his family moved to Canada in 1969, and for over twenty years he was involved in training and overseeing the supervision of students in undergraduate and graduate programs of social work at the University of British Columbia. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Social Service Administration, the University of Chicago in 1972. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.