My grandmother May McGhee, who has died aged 90, was a pioneer of counselling for infertility treatment in Scotland.
She led the establishment, in 1990, of one of the first statutorily funded infertility counselling services attached to an NHS hospital – the Glasgow Royal – and remained there as an infertility counsellor until her retirement.
During that period she also became a founding member and vice-chair of the British Infertility Counselling Association, a member of the British Agency for Adoption and Fostering’s Scottish committee, and a consultant to the Scottish Office committee tasked with assessing infertility counselling needs and resources in Scotland.
Born in Glasgow, May was one of the seven children of Charlie Farrel, a locomotive brakesman, and Lizzie (nee Corrie), a housewife. She left St Joseph’s high school at 15 to become a finisher at the Templeton carpet factory. In 1952, aged 18, she married Eddie McGhee, a steelworks train driver, having met him at the local Dennistoun dance hall.
Once all of their five children were born, she took night classes at Cumbernauld high school to get her Highers. Having obtained them, and after a period of time volunteering with the Samaritans, she took a diploma in social work at Moray House higher education college in Edinburgh, graduating in 1978.
Her first two social worker posts were with Strathclyde regional council (1978-80) and the Notre Dame Child Guidance Clinic (1980-82), after which she became a principal social worker at the St Margaret of Scotland Adoption Society (1982-87) and St Andrew’s Children’s Society in Edinburgh (1988-89).
Her work with children and families gave her an interest in infertility treatment, and she began to see that while medical help was improving, there was not enough support for families dealing with the many complex issues that infertility and its treatment caused.
In 1985 she convened a group drawn from all the voluntary adoption agencies in Scotland to discuss the provision of counselling services for people facing fertility issues in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The group’s findings confirmed the gap she had seen, and after it had presented its conclusions to the British Agency for Adoption and Fostering, Strathclyde regional council agreed to fund the service, for which she worked until retiring in 1999.
Over the years May received a large number of notes from clients acknowledging the impact she had on so many lives. She had the ability to make everyone around her feel as if they could do anything; she was boundlessly encouraging, curious and patient.
Eddie died in 2024. She is survived by her five children, 16 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
