My mother, Vicki Golding, who died aged 85, was a social worker and senior manager for the London Borough of Enfield, where she strove to do what she could to improve the lives of children and young people.
In the late 1970s, her caseload included children who had experienced sexual abuse within the family. Determined to find support for these children, she contributed to family therapy sessions with professionals who were pioneers in this field at Great Ormond Street hospital. This was at a time when childhood sexual abuse was largely unacknowledged in society.
Five years ago, my mother bumped into a woman with whom she had worked when she was a child in foster care. Delighted to see each other 36 years later, it became clear how much difference my mother had made in this woman’s turbulent childhood.
Born in north London, Vicki was the daughter of Rachel (nee Specterman), who managed a women’s dress shop in Finchley, and Gerald Leapman, a wholesale and retail clothier. Her parents divorced when she was four, and she was formally adopted by her mother’s second husband, Bertie Tobin, a bookkeeper. Vicki and her brother, Michael, were evacuated to board at St Nicholas school in Oxfordshire during the second world war. She returned to north London for her secondary education, leaving school at 16 to train as a secretary.
In 1959, she married Alan Golding, a chartered accountant. They divorced when my sister, Jillian, and I were in our teens. When we were young, our mother worked variously on a trade journal and teaching secretarial skills at Hasmonean school for girls.
She was employed by Enfield in 1974, qualifying as a social worker in 1978, for which she had studied at evening classes and then college, and becoming a team manager and later an area manager. Retiring in 1997, she continued to work as an independent consultant for the next 15 years. This included being an independent reviewing officer for looked-after children and young people in Enfield. She was a passionate advocate in this role, ensuring that the needs of the children and young people whom she reviewed were met.
My mother lived life well and to the full. She loved cooking for, and being with, family and friends. She travelled widely and read the Guardian every day, completing the quick crossword and sudokus. She also enjoyed reading and writing creatively, and published articles in social work journals. In 2001, having survived breast cancer, she co-authored a book, 44½ Choices You Can Make If You Have Cancer.
In 1990, she had met Barry Roddy, a newspaper typesetter, with whom she lived happily until his death in 2000.
She is survived by Jillian and me, and by three granddaughters, Sarah, Rachel and Abi.
