Douglas and Mavis Hooper

Douglas Frederick Hooper PhD, Professor Emeritus of Social Work at the University of Hull, and member of the Unit's partnering Centre for Social Policy has passed away on October 25th, 2010, along with his wife Mavis in a car accident. He will be missed by all at the Social Research Unit.

Six weeks earlier they had their Diamond Wedding, a celebration of a relationship which began at primary school. Marriage and the stability of the family were central to Douglas’ thinking as well as his life. Born on 27 June 1927, the youngest of four children, his father died when he was 2 and while his siblings were brought up in an orphanage, he was raised alone by his mother, a cleaner. Later these childhood deprivations stimulated his desire to promote family relationships.
 
Douglas spent his life enabling people to relate to each other. His professorial inaugural lecture was entitled “Only connect” and in a world increasingly marked by specialism Douglas emphasised interdisciplinary working. During a long career he applied his cross-disciplinary thinking as counsellor, psychotherapist, and researcher in medicine, social work and family law. Beyond his academic work he played a key role in marital and family counselling, and in counselling in primary health care. A far thinking intuitive extrovert he had the rare gift of both challenging and supporting people whether students, researchers, practitioners or those seeking his help at times of personal crisis. Short in stature, with an impish humour, he cajoled, challenged and supported people to engage or re-engage with each other.
 
On leaving Kingston County Grammar school at 16 he trained briefly as a librarian. After national service in the RAF he studied psychology at Reading University followed by a PhD at Kings College, Cambridge. In the Cambridge Psychological Laboratory under the influence of Derek Russell Davis he developed an interest in family dynamics. In 1958 he trained as a marriage guidance counsellor and continued to work with RELATE for over fifty years. In the 1970’s he chaired the services sub-committee and joined the National Executive. In 1997 he was elected Vice President, a position he held until his death.
 
After two years at the Tavistock Institute he moved to Harvard Medical School to work alongside community psychiatrist Gerald Caplan. In 1964 he returned to the UK to take up a lectureship in the Department of Mental Health at Bristol University Medical School. Here he rejoined Russell Davis, who had set up a multi disciplinary department aiming to promote a person-centred approach to psychiatry. At Bristol he established with John Roberts the first behavioural science course for medical students in the UK, and then with Roberts and Oliver Russell he offered experiential learning groups for general practitioners, psychiatrists and social workers. His research was equally collaborative, including a study with Bernard Ineichen and Judith Coleman of families moving into a new housing estate. This highlighted communal problems related to the design and management of the estate. His study of the impact of depression on marriage and the family was reported in the ‘Melancholy Marriage’ (1978) co-authored with Mary Hinchcliffe and John Roberts. After a sabbatical in Melbourne at the Australian Institute of Family Studies he became Professor of social work at Hull. There he stayed until retirement, building a new department designed to strengthen links between social work and community medicine. After retiring from his chair Douglas continued his interest in counselling services in general practice, becoming President of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, a post he held for 7 years. His subsequent book with Phillipa Weitz, “Psychological Therapies in primary care” (2006) reviewed the lessons learned from this work.
 
In 1987 on leaving Hull he joined me in Bristol to co-direct a three year inquiry, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, concerning support services for the Family Justice System. These services were separately provided by independent panels of Guardians ad Litem, the civil work of the probation service and the child-related work of the Official Solicitor. In our book ‘The Family Justice System’ (1992) we argued that family justice work was fundamentally interdisciplinary, and addressed the need for professionals under training to learn and understand the knowledge-base, specialist languages and values of other professions which they meet later in their family justice practice. More fundamentally we argued that the family justice system needs to be understood as much from a community mental health perspective as from a jurisprudential standpoint, interacting as it generally does with families undergoing stressful life transitions. At the time, in 1989, this line of thought met a ready response, and a special Interdisciplinary Committee was set up chaired by Lord Justice Thorpe; this was the forerunner to the present Family Justice Council.
 
His loss will be felt by relationship counsellors, general practitioners, psychotherapists, researchers and by lawyers working in the family justice system. In his local community his loss will be deeply felt both in the Methodist church and at Wells Cathedral where he served as a guide.
 
Douglas and Mavis are survived by Alison, Nicholas and Alex and six grandchildren to whom they were devoted.