My sister, Sue Wright, who has died aged 57, devoted her life to raising awareness about fostering and adoption as well as practising as a child protection barrister and becoming a successful businesswoman.
Our upbringing was unhappy and Sue went into foster care aged 16, but the placement did not work out; by the age of 17 she was living in a Salvation Army-run establishment with a 17-year-old flatmate, living on a £40 a week allowance. From 1982 to 1984 she found part-time work cooking and cleaning in a nursing home in Southport. It was owned by a Mrs Smythe, who welcomed her in, saying: “There’s always more room at the table.”
This became Sue’s own mantra and the title of the speech she delivered to conferences and corporate audiences to raise awareness of the need for more foster carers and adoptive parents.
Born in Liverpool, Sue was the daughter of Ann (nee Clayton), who worked for the council, and John Sherman, employed in logistics. Sue went to Stanley high school, Southport, and having left with no qualifications, was determined to become a barrister so that she should stand up for others without a voice.
She put herself through college and night school to gain some O-levels and took a BTec in business studies and finance while working for Mrs Smythe, then went on to study law at Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire) in the late 1980s.
From there she moved to London in the early 90s, and completed her bar exams while working at Lehman Brothers in the City, where they thought she was doing beauty college exams.
Sue moved back to Merseyside in the late 90s and fostered for Liverpool city council for 16 years, taking care of seven children in total, at first alongside working full-time as a barrister specialising in child protection, then later running the Harrogate Group, a property finance and advisory company that she set up in 2021.
Sue established a reputation as one of the north of England’s leading advocates. Her driving desire to help others extended to dogs; she was an active supporter of several rescue charities, including Manchester Dogs Home, helping to raise £2.2m to rebuild its premises after an arson attack in September 2014.
Only four months before her death from cancer she was presented with a special commendation for her work with children and families at the 2025 Women of the Year awards. She campaigned for routine annual blood tests to become available on the NHS, as she believed this would have helped to diagnose her condition earlier and could have saved her life.
Sue is survived by her partner, Faisal Arif, her daughter, Sonia, from her marriage to the footballer Mark Wright, which ended in divorce, and her children, Ruth, Keira, Cory and Miley, her grand-daughter, Delilah, and me.
