How the college set Molly on her career path
MOLLY Moody’s two years’ studying at Constantine College stood her in very good stead for her chosen career.
She was a foster carer and mum-of-three in 1965 when she saw an advertisement for a new Home Office course run at the college.
Now aged 85, the grandmother-of-eight said: “It was for mature students who wanted to qualify to work in the children’s departments of local authorities long before social services existed.
“The children’s department came into being after the discovery of widespread poverty and deprivation when mass evacuation of children took place during the Second World War.”
Molly said: “I was aged 40, married with three children. I had done no formal learning since leaving school at 16 with a school certificate to my credit. But I was drawn to applying for this course and was accepted.
“My previous experience with foster children stood me in good stead and my husband George and I had been short-term foster parents for the local authority and for an adoption society for a number of years.
She fondly remembers her two years at Constantine College, saying: “It was a whole change of lifestyle for me to move into a learning situation. We studied law relating to the juvenile court and the procedures for taking children into carer as well as sociology, social history and many branches of human growth and development.”
“My dissertation focused on the subject of ‘the syndrome of the battered baby’. In the 1960s there was little awareness of this condition, even in medical circles and there was no English published work.
“I was invited by a professor at Guy’s Hospital to visit there, where I was given access to their library where I found the results of research taking place in America. I had to pinch myself to prove that this really was happening, as I sat among the young medical students to do my research.”
Molly went on to a varied career ending up working within the family courts where estranged couples fought over the custody and access of their children.
“An emotional environment, but those two years at Constantine College stood me in good stead.”
