Standing

(1924-2001) was an educational psychologist and pioneer in the theory of residential child care. His book Residential Life With Children (1970) became a classic. At University College, London he studied chemistry for two years and during that time read David Wills’ book, The Hawkspur Experiment, about an experimental youth camp. Inspired by Wills’ work he left university and worked there himself as a student helper, though interrupted by a month's imprisonment as a conscientious objector. He went on to gain a first-class psychology degree from UCL. In 1950 he moved to Bristol to work as an educational psychologist in the Child and Family Guidance Service. Subsequently, appointed as a lecturer at Bristol University, he established and ran the Bristol Advanced Course in Residential Work with Children. He advocated the potential of children to grow and change and at the heart of his book, Residential Life With Children, is the notion that children need to be held, nurtured, and supported to develop and maintain personal integrity. He was something of a renaissance man with a wide range of interests in the visual arts, music, literature, the countryside and wild places. The joys of his life were his wife Gill who died in 1997 and his four children, Jonathan, Joanna, Charlotte, and Phoebe, all of whom survive him.