Susan Waterstone obituary: Distinguished social worker and exceptional athlete

Born: 2nd April, 1957

Died: 1st August, 2021

Susan Waterstone, who has died aged 64 after a long struggle with cancer, was a deeply admired social worker, both in the practical and academic spheres, who combined a working career of noticeably above-average achievement with equally notable accomplishments as one of this country's best amateur athletes.

Waterstone won the National Senior Women’s Marathon in 2001 and also the Longford Senior Women’s marathon that year. In the Dublin Marathon in October 2001, she ran a sub three-hour race and the same the following year. A long-time member of the Civil Service Harriers club in Dublin’s Phoenix Park (having earlier run with Naas AC), once Waterstone reached her 50s she was also a member of Irish teams that competed in the annual cross-country event in the veteran competition, which is contested between the Republic, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales.

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One of her long-term running partners at Civil Service Harriers, Riitta Kansaniva, told The Irish Times this week that Waterstone had kept on running even after her diagnosis with cancer in 2015: “Susan bravely kept on running and walking even through her chemo [treatment]. In 2019 we decided to do the Dublin City Marathon again . . . but [eventually] had to forget it.” Nonetheless, the pair did manage to run a mile course through the Phoenix Park as recently as last October.

Another running partner from Civil Service Harriers, Willie Devine, made a remark which was widely reflected by those who worked with her in her professional life: “Susan was one of the kindest people I have ever met. She was unbelievably focused: if she set her heart and mind on something, she just did it.”

‘Champion of young people’

Indeed she did, apparently. Speaking particularly of Waterstone's work with young people, Dr Gloria Kirwan, who worked with her in the social work degree programme in Trinity College Dublin from 2005 and, from 2018, in NUI Maynooth, said: "Susan went above and beyond the call of duty: if she could help, she did . . . She really was a champion of young people, she understood them and worked to find a route to resolving their difficulties. She would have worked with traumatised, very difficult situations . . . She was dedicated to people, other people were at the centre of her life, never herself."

Kirwan, who had first met Waterstone when both were students of the undergraduate degree in social work in TCD in the early 1980s, asked her to join her in teaching the postgraduate master’s course in applied social work at Maynooth from 2018, where they designed a module to “help children to be what they can, to be safe, happy children”. Kirwan adds that Waterstone was a “hugely supportive supervisor” of students, especially when they were on placement assignments, learning the practicalities of social work with young people.

Another colleague, clinical psychologist Dr Emma Daly, who also worked with Waterstone at Maynooth, gave an insight into her way of tackling the sensitive nature of her work: “Modelling supportive and collegial multidisciplinary work was very important to her and formed the basis of our lectures . . . Susan sat beside, never in front, of families, helping them to find the glimmer of hope during their most challenging times, and she always managed it. From there she built upon these experiences to restore confidence in both parents and young people and generate nurturing and kindness within families.”

Youth social work

Waterstone had specialised in youth social work since starting her career in Crumlin children's hospital's oncology ward, working with Dr Finn Breathnach, in the mid-1980s. Gloria Kirwan remarks of this that it was "really, really hard work. Children's cancers can be very hard to treat. That was really important to her, it was the foundation of her work."

Waterstone then joined the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Ballymun, Dublin, where her manager was Irish Times columnist John McSharry, and later worked in Athy, Co Kildare, for the organisation, before returning to TCD in 2005 as a lecturer.

Susan Waterstone grew up near Malahide, Co Dublin, the eldest of eight children of Michael, an optician, and Gretchen (née Harrison) Butler-Rees, and was educated at the-then Mountjoy and Marine School (now Mount Temple Comprehensive) in Clontarf, and at TCD, where, before studying social science, she took an honours BA in mental and moral science, Trinity’s (very demanding) philosophy degree.

Her desire for learning never left her, and before she passed away she had been completing a master’s in urban regeneration at the Technological University, Dublin.

In 1980 she married fellow social worker Aidan Waterstone, who survives her with their sons Joshua and Daniel. She is survived also by her mother and her siblings Carol, Stephen, Vivienne (Viv), Andrew, Cathy, Brian and Sarah.