Joan Freedman

Supporting families at Lockerbie — the Jewish Care pioneer who promoted mental health awareness

RADICALLY MINDED and with a strong sense of social justice, Joan Freedman, who has died aged 91, was a pioneer in the provision of adult social services to the community and instrumental in the creation of Jewish Care. She exemplified the strong minded, committed women of her generation who devoted tireless energy to the organisations they supported, while providing a loving, supportive home for their families.

Born in Willesden to Lewis and Rose Sklan, she was the second of three children, growing up in a middle class, communally active, Zionist home. The Sklans were cabinet makers, producing quality reproduction furniture in their East End workshops. Her mother’s family, the Tibbers, manufactured raincoats and overcoats. Their forebears are honoured on the Past Honorary Officers boards of several London synagogues.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Joan was sent with her mother, siblings, aunts and cousins to North America. The disruption to her education was compensated by her formative teenage experiences, first in Canada, then New York and on returning to London, at St Paul’s Girls School. But a double tragedy in 1947, a few days after her 21st birthday had the greatest impact. Her elder brother Harry, a medical student, was killed in an accident while on National Service. Harry’s body was brought home and buried in the military section of Willesden Cemetery. As the family got up from shivah her father, who had been unwell, collapsed and died, according to the family doctor, of a broken heart.

Joan was now the elder daughter in a family of three grieving women, an experience which could have destroyed her. Instead it made her. All her achievements over the coming years were rooted in the courage and strength she found to support and sustain her mother and younger sister.

In 1949 Joan married Louis Freedman, a recently qualified GP from Manchester. For the next few years she played the role of doctor’s wife and mother to her three sons. When her children were old enough she volunteered in a local psychiatric day centre. Realising the dearth of day care facilities within the Jewish community, she opened a centre for the elderly in Daleham Gardens, north west London, under the auspices of the Jewish Welfare Board. When the Centre outgrew the limited space available, she went fund-raising. She approached her husband’s patient, Sir Michael Sobell — and the Sobell Centre in Golders Green was born.

For many years, social care provision in the community was fragmented. Joan worked with colleagues to facilitate a merger between the Jewish Welfare Board and the Jewish Blind Society; creating Jewish Care. Joan became chair of Social Services, vice chair and then vice president.

She served on the Mental Health Tribunal, visiting Broadmoor regularly. As soon as she heard about the Lockerbie air disaster she rushed to Scotland to offer Jewish Care’s support to the bereaved Jewish families she knew would arrive. She recruited and organised the many volunteers at the Sobell Centre. At home, guests, frequently the most lonely or vulnerable in the community, shared her Shabbat table.

Joan resigned as a JP in protest when government cuts resulted in the closure of local mental health services. Highly principled, she was not prepared to imprison people with psychiatric problems due to the closure of their hostels. She threw herself back into her work with Jewish Care, opening the Sobell Centre’s dementia unit and scouring London for memorabilia to equip its reminiscence room.

Joan is survived by three sons, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

HARRY FREEDMAN