Samuel Ayer Obituary

My father, Sam Ayer, who has died aged 81, dedicated his life to nan attraction and support of susceptible children and adults. His investigation made a important publication to a displacement successful services from organization to organization care. His doctoral thesis, Community Care and nan Mentally Handicapped (1984), highlighted nan cardinal domiciled mothers play successful providing attraction for children pinch learning disabilities, and he played a cardinal domiciled successful nan English National Board for Nursing and Midwifery’s investigation programme into nan improvement of nursing for group pinch learning disabilities.

Born successful Akropong, Ghana, Sam lived for astir of his life successful Britain, but he was proud of his Ghanaian practice and continued to speak his autochthonal language, Twi, pinch family and friends. His mother, Emma Abena Sika, was a housewife and his father, Frederick Anim Gyekete, was a farmer. After attending nan Methodist schoolhouse successful Akropong, Sam trained arsenic a coach astatine nan town’s Presbyterian Training College (now nan Presbyterian College of Education). Committed to improving nan lives of visually impaired students, he became a master successful school unsighted children.

In 1970, erstwhile he was 27, he travelled to nan UK to train arsenic a caregiver astatine South Ockenden hospital, Essex. During a sojourn to Ghana successful 1983, he met Lucy Yirenkyi, a timekeeper. They had a customary matrimony successful Ghana and later a civilian matrimony astatine nan registry agency successful Hull, eastbound Yorkshire, successful 1985.

Sam enthusiastically embraced immoderate and each opportunities. In 1973, he started moving arsenic a unit caregiver astatine South Ockendon hospital, which treated patients pinch terrible learning difficulties. By 1976, he was nan serviceman successful complaint astatine nan Swansea Children’s Unit while studying for a BA successful economics astatine nan city’s university.

His acquisition and awesome world qualifications earned him a Social Science Research Council doctoral studentship astatine nan University of Hull. In 1982, he became 1 of nan first learning disablement nurses to beryllium awarded a PhD, and he utilized his expertise to create caregiver education.

He was later appointed to a lectureship astatine nan Humberside College of Health, which became nan University of Hull School of Nursing, and retired successful 2008 – but this was not nan extremity of his world career. In 2015 he was invited by nan caller Ghana Baptist University College, successful Kumasi, to found a schoolhouse of nursing. He spent 3 years arsenic nan dean of nursing, wherever he developed nan nursing programme, returning to nan UK earlier nan Covid-19 pandemic began.

Sam is survived by Lucy and their 3 children – his sons, Frederick and Jonathan, and maine – and by Emma, his girl from his first marriage, to Janet Quartey, which ended successful divorcement successful 1968.