My mother, Sheila Scott, who has died aged 74, was chief executive of the National Care Association (NCA) for 26 years. She will be remembered for her inspiring leadership at a time of huge growth in the sector as community care was being expanded.
In 1987 she was appointed chief executive of the NCA, which represents small and medium-sized providers. She served on several government taskforces, including one that oversaw the implementation of the 1993 community care reforms to move people out of long-stay hospital wards. In 2007 she was appointed OBE.
Sheila grew up in Gorefield, Cambridgeshire, on a farm with her parents, Audrey (nee Louth) and George (known as Bill) Brownlow and her younger siblings, Anne and Raymond. She loved life in the Fens and talked particularly fondly of the tomato greenhouse on the farm and the smell that she would forever remember.
After education at Wisbech high school for girls (now Wisbech grammar school), Sheila moved to Cambridge to qualify as a registered nurse at Addenbrooke’s hospital. Nursing took her to London, where she met Alan Scott, whom she married in 1972, and built up a successful nursing home business.
Sheila was devoted to politics and to the Conservative party, serving as a councillor for many years in Barnet, north London, and later in Peterborough. In London her local MP was Margaret Thatcher, who became a great inspiration. Sheila stood unsuccessfully in Stoke-on-Trent South in the 1997 general election, and subsequently became an advocate for, and mentor of, other women seeking office. Not a few who have since achieved positions of authority owe her a debt of gratitude.
She was a proud and active member of Soroptimist International, the global volunteer service and advocacy organisation for women’s rights and gender equality, in both Peterborough and in Richmond, Virginia, after she moved to the US in 2021 to live close to me and my family.
Sheila and Alan divorced amicably in 1996. She is survived by my brother James and me, her grandchildren, Chloe, Cameron and Cecilia, and her siblings, Anne and Raymond.
