My friend Alister Prince, who has died of cancer aged 77, spent his career in child safeguarding and protection in London, becoming a team manager in Lambeth, then a senior manager in Newham, before moving into freelance training and consultancy in 1991.
His exceptionally bright mind and encyclopedic memory equipped him well to work as an expert witness in complex family court proceedings and to train lawyers on children’s law. He was the co-author, with Barbara Mitchels, of The Children Act and Medical Practice (1992), which aimed to explain key powers and concepts in children’s law to doctors.
Alister was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in early adulthood. This involved chronic tunnel vision, which he described as “like looking through two drinking straws”. His eyes took a long time to adjust to changes in light, during which he could not see anything. He was registered as partially sighted in the 1990s when I first met him, then as blind in 2002.
Although there will likely have been times when his sight would have made the demands of work even more exhausting, Alister was always generous with his knowledge and time, patient and open to coaching others in their work on complex childcare cases. Along with a handful of other consultants, his work set the standard by which others were measured. I have no doubt that he positively influenced many professionals’ practice and, by extension, children’s lives, for the better.
Alister was the son of Scottish parents, Gordon Prince, a psychiatrist, and his wife, Wendy, a psychiatric nursing sister, who met while stationed in India serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps. His sister, Anne, was born in India, then the family moved to Dublin, where Alister was born, before settling in London. After school in Dulwich and A-levels at Croydon Tech, Alister studied psychology, sociology and economics at Brunel University, graduating in 1973, and qualified as a social worker at South Bank Polytechnic (now University) in 1975.
I met Alister when we co-ran training for social workers on children’s law and court skills. It was the beginning of many collaborations, and a friendship of nearly 30 years. He was known affectionately as “he who lunches” – meeting for meals formed the setting for many of our encounters.
Alister had a lifelong enjoyment and appreciation of music. When he stopped work in 2014, he refused to consider it a “retirement”, instead calling it “refocusing” on his passion for music. He DJed at London clubs, including Jamboree, occasionally travelling to perform sets in Italy. His Folk and Roots programme for RNIB Radio ran for 10 years, with the last episode being recorded shortly before the end of his life. His warmth and passion for the music shone through in his programmes, and listeners appreciated the care he put into the selection of tracks for each episode.
Alister was devoted to his family. He is survived by his wife, Louise (nee Yorr), whom he married in 1979, son, George, and grandchildren, Felix and Leo, and his sister, Anne.
