Joan Cooper

Joan Davies Cooper (12 August 1914 – 15 January 1999) was an English civil servant and social worker. She joined the Derbyshire Education Department and worked with child evacuees before being appointed Assistant Director of Education. In 1948, Cooper was made Children's Officer for East Sussex and was appointed Chief Inspector of the Children's Department of the Home Office in 1965. She became a director of the DHSS Social Welfare Service at the Department of Health and Social Security in 1971 and helped to unify the service and give professional guidance and support to social service departments. A periodic series of lectures at the University of Sussex focusing on the consequences of failing to help children and society were named after her.

Early life Cooper was born into a Moravian community in Droylsden, Manchester on 12 August 1914, the start of the First World War, to area manager Valentine Holland Cooper and teacher Louisa Wynnefred Gardner. Cooper was educated at the Fairfield High School for Girls,

Career She began taking an interest in social work by working in the slums of Ancoats. Cooper also did probation work part-time and went to Bude, Cornwall to find work as a teacher.