My wife, Lorraine Tollemache, who has died aged 82, was an artist, teacher, social worker and psychotherapist. She was best known for her work as a senior clinical lecturer who trained social workers at the Tavistock Clinic in London.
Born in Quetta, in what is now Pakistan, to Leila (nee Portlock) and Freddy Allen, a brigadier in the Indian Army, Lorraine was the eldest of three sisters. Her father was from Bray in County Wicklow, Ireland, and she was always proud of her Irish heritage. After Partition in India, the family returned to England on the Empire Windrush in 1947, leaving from Karachi, and settled in Surrey. She attended Guildford high school and then Roedean school in Brighton, East Sussex, where she excelled at English and art.
She studied at Farnham Art School (now part of the University for the Creative Arts) and then at the Institute of Education, University College London, where she and I met. We married in 1962 and moved to Cornwall, both working at St Austell grammar school. Lorraine was a gifted and imaginative art teacher who continued to paint, draw and produce ceramics throughout her life. We adopted two children, Billy and Rosa, in 1966 and 1971 respectively, and moved to Highbury in 1976, where our home was a testament to her visual flair and the location for many a spirited political and literary discussion.
Lorraine completed a degree in English at Bedford College, University of London, in 1976, next qualifying as a social worker at Chelsea College in 1979 and then as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in 1990. Fostering two children, volunteering at Holloway prison and carrying out social work at St Charles hospital in central London from 1980 to 1985, she established the foundations for her successful career at the Tavistock, working there from 1990 onwards as a senior clinical lecturer in social work in its child and family department.
Using her expertise in the complexities of fostering and adoption, she was a co-founder, with Caroline Lindsey, of the fostering and adoption team, and a co-convener of the fostering and adoption workshop with Jenny Kenrick. In 2006, she, Lindsey and Kenrick were co-editors of the book Creating New Families: Therapeutic Approaches to Fostering, Adoption and Kinship Care. She also established training for social workers under the title of “children in transition”, which became part of the Tavistock MA in advanced social work. She retired in 2003.
Lorraine was fit well into older age. She loved walking, dancing and taking her grandchildren ice skating and swimming, impressing them with her ability to vault over a gate in her 70s.
Even after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2015, she walked and sang her way around Hackney and Islington parks, always looking forward to a celebratory chocolate ice-cream.
She is survived by me, our two children, and four grandchildren, Finn, Lizzy, Poppy and Felix.
