OBITUARY : Jane Wyndham-Kaye

For more than 20 years, Jane Wyndham-Kaye was the highly effective voice of the professional association for health visitors and an influential trade unionist.

Her appointment first as Assistant General Secretary to the Women Public Health Officers' Association in 1958, and then six years later to the top job of General Secretary at the Health Visitors' Association (as it had become) could hardly have been predicted from her early career.

Born in Hertfordshire in 1921, Jane Wyndham-Kaye left school to study the dramatic arts. The Second World War intervened and she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, rising to the rank of junior commander. After the war, she ran a nursery and served as the only woman member of Hemel Hempstead Borough Council, and later as constituency agent. Those who knew her only later in her Health Visitors' Association persona were kept guessing as to which party she had supported then or subsequently. The job of General Secretary demanded, and got, a completely neutral party political stance from its occupant.

In her thirties Jane Wyndham-Kaye studied law in her spare time, and was called to the Bar in 1958. She never practised, however. Within weeks she had responded to a Health Visitors' Association job advertisement. Twenty-one years later, in an interview for the Nursing Mirror, she recalled that her fate was sealed the minute she arrived for the selection panel; somehow, she knew that this was the work she was meant to do. She soon learned that the body she had joined was no ordinary little society of felt-hatted do-gooders. Founded in 1896 by a group of women sanitary inspectors, it became a trade union in 1918 and joined the Trades Union Congress in 1924, a unique position for a professional nursing organisation.

On entering office as General Secretary in 1964, Jane Wyndham-Kaye became, under Association rules, the sole non-health visitor member and, indeed, the only general secretary in recent times not to hold the professional qualification. This was, in the light of her sharp mind, legal training and political experience, hardly a handicap and possibly an advantage. What is certain is that, during her administration, the duality of professional and trade union roles flourished, the interests of each advancing substantially under her skilled and steady hand.

On both fronts, Wyndham-Kaye insisted upon the application of clear thinking, reasoned argument and avoidance of dogma; knowing and playing by the "rules of the game", and acknowledging always the political realities. This won her immense respect from nursing and midwifery leaders and her trades union colleagues, who could only admire her negotiating skills as, year after year in the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council, she maintained health visiting's position at the top of the pay scale. Dame Catherine Hall, a former head of the Royal College of Nursing described her as a "doughty fighter for her members", but also as someone who could take an informed and intelligent independent position in resolving conflict between the different sectional interests.

Within the trade union movement, as member of the TUC Health Services and Local Government committees, and valued colleague and friend of many union leaders, her wise counsel was sought in and outside committee. Her ability and independence meant that she understood and was trusted by both the professional organisations and the unions. During the dispute affecting the public and health services in 1979 and 1982, she played a significant, although informal, advisory and mediatory role.

As part of her mission to represent the profession, Jane Wyndham-Kaye lectured and travelled all over Britain to speak at Association meetings, where her presence would guarantee standing room only. Through example and by instruction, generations of health visitors and school nurses learned how to promote their professional, trades union and clients' interests in the corridors of power. The lesson was put to historic effect in the Association's successful lobby of Parliament in 1978, when the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Bill was amended to secure health visiting's continued separate identity as a profession.

After retirement, Wyndham-Kaye continued to serve the health service with distinction, first on North West Thames Regional Health Authority, and then as Chairman of South West Hertfordshire Health Authority 1986- 90. Once again, her professionalism as chairman, an insistence that issues were debated on their merits and not on party lines, and consummate wit and charm, guided the health authority adroitly through some politically tricky waters.

Jane Wyndham-Kaye drew a clear line between her public and personal lives. However, those who knew her well were witnesess not only to the fortitude with which she bore the tragic loss of her son but also, more felicitously, to a warmth and generosity of spirit which inspired immense personal loyalty and admiration.

Jane Wyndham-Kaye, barrister: born Hemel Hempstead 1921; Assistant General Secretary, Health Visitors' Association 1958-64; General Secretary, Health Visitors' Association 1964-84; OBE 1980; Member, NW Thames Regional Health Authority 1982-86; Chairman, SW Hertfordshire Health Authority 1986-90; married (one son deceased; marriage dissolved); died Oxford 5 April 1996.