Social care writer and campaigner dies

Maureen Oswin, the writer and campaigner, has died at the age of
70. In 1999 she won the Community Care Millennium Readers’ Award
for the living person who contributed most to social care in the
century, writes Terry Philpot.

Oswin, who was born in Surrey, fought relentlessly against the
appalling conditions which often existed in the old long-stay
hospitals, and in particular to get children out of hospitals and
other institutional forms of residential care.

Her campaigns and books like ‘The Empty Hours’ brought
professional hostility, blocked promotion and her pension was
docked. Her later work was in the field of bereavement and in 1991
she published her last book (reprinted last year), ‘Am I Allowed to
Cry?’, a study of bereavement and people with learning
difficulties.