Gwyn Roberts

Professor Gwyn Roberts was a thoughtful, caring doctor of considerable ability, which he used to improve the quality of life for people with learning difficulties. He was witty and wise, erudite, innovative and always reassuring and supportive. He was a team builder who inspired great loyalty and affection from his colleagues. He desired change for the benefit of his patients and their families but was always realistic about what could be achieved. Despite his dry humour, he was a quiet and contemplative person, in many ways understated and at times troubled by self-doubt. However, he will be remembered as a leader and an enabler who made a lasting impression in his field.

Gwyn Roberts was born in 1933 and brought up in North Wales (with Welsh as his first language). He went on to train at the Welsh National School of Medicine in Cardiff where he graduated in 1956. After qualifying he worked at Whitchurch Hospital and gained the DPM in 1961. He then worked at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, researching inborn errors of metabolism. After further research and clinical experience at Oxford, he moved to Cambridge in 1965 to commission the Ida Darwin Hospital, in its day a progressive establishment for the care of children and adults with learning disabilities. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, Gwyn helped change attitudes and set new standards for these most vulnerable of people. Perhaps his greatest gift was his gentle, unpatronising manner with patients and their families, to whom he always listened so carefully.

In 1971, he was a major contributor to the Government White Paper Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped. Subsequently, he was appointed to lead the first Government Hospital Advisory Service team, which visited hospitals across the country to improve standards of care. Locally, he identified a need for, and created, the Child Development Centre, one of the first of its kind in the country.

In 1995, Gwyn left the Ida Darwin to take up the first Chair of Learning Disabilities at the University of Nottingham. Here, he set about the complicated and overdue task of reshaping clinical services as well as establishing his new department. He attracted high quality researchers and inspired several trainees from the area postgraduate psychiatry training scheme to specialise in learning disabilities. Beyond the department, he shared his knowledge of medical ethics and made an important contribution towards building academic chairs in other parts of the UK. He also served on numerous committees for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, of which he was a Fellow, and was medical advisor to MENCAP for many years.

Soon after his retirement he developed colonic cancer from which, after a long illness, he died on 11 January 2002. Gwyn was first and foremost a family man and he is survived by his wife Sheila (Kidd), a fellow medical student to whom he was married for 43 years. He also leaves a son, a daughter (a community paediatrician) and two grandchildren.