Joan Cooper (social worker)

Joan Davies Cooper CB (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.