My friend Diana Joll, who has died aged 92, had a successful career in social work, beginning in 1949 as house mother in a children’s home and ending in 1987 as a senior psychiatric social worker for Brighton and Hove council. In parallel, she developed a passion for the art of the silhouette, collecting more than 700 works and achieving national recognition for her expertise in the subject.
Diana was strongly influenced by her father, Teddy Joll, an artistically minded civil servant who had met her mother, Molly (nee McClean), in the 1920s. They divorced when Diana was five, and a few years later Teddy married Mary Brunner, who had been a nursery school teacher and was a calming influence in Diana’s life.
Diana attended Frensham Heights boarding school in Surrey, then took a degree in social administration at Manchester University, graduating in 1949. She showed bravery at her first job, as house mother in a children’s home in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, challenging the repressive matron who ran the place.
In 1951 she moved to London to work across the capital for the Invalid Children’s Aid Association and then the Family Welfare Association, which was based at the Paddington Citizen’s Advice Bureau.
She then worked as a child care officer with Hampshire council’s children’s department, based in Winchester (1953-58). In 1958 she took a mental health course at the London School of Economics and the following year began work as a psychiatric social worker at St Francis hospital in Haywards Heath, Sussex. The Mental Health Act (1959) had proposed changing the emphasis of care to rehabilitation in the community, and Diana was instrumental in effecting the reforms in Sussex; by 1963 she was head of a nine-strong team of social workers.
She stayed in that role, with Brighton and Hove council, until her retirement in 1987, after which she continued to help former clients on a voluntary basis, through support groups in Brighton and Hove.
The diligence she applied to her career was matched by her devotion to the art of the silhouette, which had begun on her move to Brighton. Her collection, which is the basis of the Profiles of the Past website, was enhanced by its setting in her flat in The Regency Town House in Hove. With the help of members of the Silhouette Collectors Club, of which she was secretary from the 1980s until her death, she was able to entrust care of the works to the house, supported by the Brunswick Town Charitable Trust. The trust now plans to create the Diana Joll Silhouette Centre, a national resource promoting research about, and appreciation of, silhouettes.
Diana is survived by her sisters, Cate and Jenny, and her half-sister, Judy.
