Donald F W Ford was a Labour Party member of the London County Council 1949-61 for Lambeth Brixton. Ford was chairman of the county council's Children's Committee for five years and a juvenile magistrate. He was the author of The Deprived Child and the Community" (1955). He was appointed to the Committee on Children and Young Persons (generally known as the Ingleby Committee after its chairman, Visount Ingleby) in October 1956 and which published its report in 1961.