Pauline Weinstein

Pauline completed her teacher training in the 50s and taught in an inner city secondary school before moving to a residential school for maladjusted children.

Whilst bringing up a family, Pauline worked at different times as a volunteer with an innovative organisation in the field of mental health in Hackney; was a founding Trustee of Centreprise an alternative bookshop; & bought & ran the second Playbus in England.

She then undertook training on an extra -mural social science 3 year course, & later at the then NW London polytechnic, Pauline completed a part time 3 year course in Applied Social Science.

Pauline worked part time as a primary school teacher, later becoming the second School Counsellor in London, at the same time undertaking a variety of counselling training.

She moved gradually into paid work with adults in a variety of educational areas such as developing & running Childminders courses, courses for Playgroup leaders Mothers & Toddlers etc & then taking on an area responsibility for GLC registered playgroups.

When Pauline left London for Suffolk she had a small holding which took up much of her time. She did keep my hand in by working for the then Community Education department, mostly running residential courses for Youth Workers & others & working as an Adult Ed Tutor doing Stress management, Assertiveness Training & the like. Pauline was also helping her husband with his business which was running a Market Research Company.

When her husband had a stroke, Pauline became his part time Carer but along with working at the local College of Agriculture & Horticulture. There she helped set up the Management Training department based around NVQ3,4,& 5. They trained Post Grads, redundant managers & did outreach work with small businesses. Pauline also was a redundancy counsellor for many years.

When Pauline’s husband died, she moved to Norwich where she had to care for my elderly mother's needs & where she began to get involved in the older peoples agenda. Pauline is presently Vice Chair of EROPAG, & her local Older peoples Forum & Chair of Future East the Eastern Regional Government Forum on Aging. Pauline also founded and runs WISEArchive(www.wisearchive.co.uk) which is dedicated to collecting & preserving older peoples memories of their working lives.

Pauline has assisted with some research projects for Kings College & Help the Aged including the longer piece of work in 2005 on the follow-up to the NSF for Older people.