From the time of her research in the late 1980s, Ann Buchanan, who has died aged 80, was interested in the outcomes experienced by children in care. Through her work as a social worker, she showed that in adulthood such children developed significant mental health and other problems. Finding that the state did not always make the best parent, she looked at how to foster supportive positive family relationships for children’s wellbeing.
This interest broadened into many other issues regarding children’s welfare. The effects of divorce on children, their mental health, fathering, the role of grandparents – all these and more provided empirical evidence that informed government policy and resulted in books both authored by Ann, such as Cycles of Child Maltreatment (1996), and co-edited, such as Brothers and Sisters (2021, with Anna Rotkirch). While she did much to quantify the importance of family relations, what was rare about her academic work – as in her practice as a social worker – was that she was less interested in theories than in practical solutions.
