My wife, Maureen Towlson, who has died aged 89, became a social worker in Birmingham in the 1980s after spending much of the earlier part of her life as a housewife.
She started out in 1983 as a support worker at the St Basils centre, Birmingham, a voluntary organisation providing services to young homeless people, where she worked mainly with vulnerable women. In 1986 she became a social worker with Birmingham city council in Edgbaston, assessing the needs of older people.
Three years later she took a post at St Steven’s day centre, Handsworth, working with people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and with a wide range of needs. It was a job she loved, and she was sad to leave it when she retired in 1996.
Maureen was born in West Bridgford, Nottingham, the middle of the three children of Leslie Towlson, a drugs buyer for Boots, and Anne (nee Darlow).
After attending Nottingham high school for girls, her first job was as a laboratory technician at Boots in Nottingham, where she met George Wibberley, a research pharmacist and a widower with two small children, John and Ann. They married in 1958, and as they had two sons together (Ian and Steven), the next 20 years or so of Maureen’s life were spent as a housewife and mother, roles in which she excelled.
She was always an avid reader, and over time developed a keen interest in social issues, current affairs and politics. She became a member of CND and was one of the thousands of women who formed a human chain around the Greenham Common base in the early 1980s. In 1981 she enrolled on a social work training course at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University), and qualified in 1983.
In retirement Maureen did volunteering, including taking seated exercise classes for older people in a residential home and by helping to run a weekly drop-in cafe for people with dementia and their carers in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
Throughout her life, what gave Maureen most satisfaction was the conversations she had with people. A phrase she often used was: “Enough about me, tell me what’s happening with you.” She was a beautiful woman who had a warm, kind and positive personality.
Maureen’s marriage to George ended in divorce. We started living together in 1986 and married in 2000. She is survived by me, by Ian, Steven, John and Ann, her grandchildren Andrew, Rachel and Niall, great-grandchildren Alex, Fleur, Evie and Sienna, and her brother Martin.
