Eva Marie Maas

Born: April 22, 1923;

Died: December 20, 2014.

Eva Marie Maas, who has died aged 91, was a former principal psychiatric social worker in the department of child and family psychiatry at Yorkhill Hospital. She was a major influence in the department both as a highly skilled psychiatric social worker, working with children and families with complex needs, and as a practice teacher, supervisor, trainer and mentor to the many professionals and trainee professionals who came to the department.

She was born into a Jewish family in Berlin and grew up in a large, comfortable house in the city, where her father owned textile factories. The family enjoyed summers in their house on the Baltic coast and winters skiing in the mountains, but it all came to an end with the rise of Hitler.

Before war broke out, Eva's mother brought her to London where Eva stayed with a relative. Her mother then returned to Berlin but it was too late for the family to join Eva and Frau Maas and her daughters moved to Bavaria where they remained throughout and after the war. Eva's father died of a heart attack in 1942 aged 63.

Eva attended boarding school for a while then returned to London where she undertook some secretarial and voluntary work. This involved caring for refugee Jewish Children in the Anna Freud centre.

In 1945 she gained entry to the London School of Economics to study social work and qualified as a psychiatric social worker. In the fifties she spent a year at the Smith College School for Social Work in Massachusetts, attending a specialist course in psychodynamically oriented clinical social work.

In 1951 she moved to Glasgow to work in adult psychiatry in the Southern General Hospital. After a few years, she was asked to join the department of child and family psychiatry at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and she was the principal social worker there until her retirement in 1983.

Her standards were of the highest and she could be fierce. She was challenging but supportive and her knowledge and skills were recognised throughout the hospital. She was asked to join the team in the new renal unit to provide support and guidance to the parents of patients and to staff developing this new service.

In retirement she continued to provide support and supervision to professional staff working in adoption services and family mediation. She also contributed to the training of members of the Children's Panel. There are many social work and medical practitioners who became better practitioners because of the insights they gained from supervision and discussion with her about the many complex issues involved in helping children and their families.

She was committed to her professional life but she was committed to life in general. She loved the world of the arts and culture. She regularly attended at Scottish Opera and was particularly knowledgeable about the work of Wagner. She appreciated classical music and was a frequent concert goer and, although she was not a musician, she had friends who were and enjoyed their company and their music.

She visited exhibitions and was an active member of an art club. She was politically aware and followed current affairs at home and abroad. Because of her own experiences, she was very aware of social justice and human rights issues, writing to politicians and contributing to various causes and campaigns. She loved the outdoors.

She was a great hill walker and enjoyed climbing the Scottish Hills with a group of friends well into retirement. She shared a small cottage in Kentallen on the shores of Loch Linnhe and spent weekend and summer holidays there. She had learned to ski as a small child so was a confident skier and for many years went ski touring in the Alps with her sister Marianne. The sisters were the closest of friends and great travellers. They especially enjoyed walking in Greece and the Greek Islands and Eva attended Greek classes so she could converse with people on their travels.

She was also a keen gardener and created a lovely garden in Glasgow and at the cottage in Kentallen. She was an ace Scrabble player and was playing with and beating friends right up until she became ill just over a year ago. She organised a 'do' for her 90th birthday to which many friends came. It was a great celebration. Eva Maas was interested in everything and everyone; she had a natural curiosity about the world and people and had a real gift of finding out about people and their worlds. Her many friends in Scotland and elsewhere are testimony to that.