Corinne Rees, who died in 2020, was a community paediatrician in Bristol, specialising in adoption. She was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the College in recognition of her work with children and adoptive parents, the comprehensive service she developed, her teaching and her publications. Several of these bridged the gap between paediatric and psychology services and were concerned with childhood attachment; emotional well-being and abuse; helping recovery from neglect and abuse; and the long-term physical, psychological and social consequences of disordered relationships and trauma in the early years of life.
Corinne wrote also on the need for measures preventing iatrogenic psychological harm to be as robust as those for physical harm; the often neglected role of the autonomic nervous system in childhood illness; and the importance of awareness of gaps in knowledge in healthcare, including recognising the existence of unknown unknowns.
She devoted much of her last two decades to the care and support of her daughter, who had become increasingly unwell with complicated Ehlers-Danlos syndrome from the age of eight. This included tenacious advocacy in sometimes challenging medical settings, not least in relation to unexplained symptoms.
Corinne's parents were Cynthia and Ronald Illingworth.
Cynthia was the first consultant in paediatric accident and emergency medicine in the UK. She was a committed mentor to her junior staff and published widely, notably on patterns of accidents. She also was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the College.
Ronald became the first professor of child health in Sheffield in 1947. He was an internationally renowned paediatrician, an inspirational teacher and prolific author of original articles and of books for paediatricians, general practitioners and parents. His greatest interest was child development, but he built from scratch a multi-disciplinary academic department and drew staff from all over the world. He pioneered changes now taken for granted such as unrestricted visiting for parents and siblings. Perhaps the most well-known of his books was The Normal Child, its 10th edition being published in 1991, the year after his death at the age of 80. His teaching films from the 1950s are held in the College’s archive. Amongst many national and international honours he was awarded Freedom of the City of Sheffield and the James Spence Medal.