Terence Christopher STANCLIFFE was born Private. Susan Elizabeth KNIBBS, daughter of Bernard Robert KNIBBS and Norah Mary Hatten MILLS , was born 10 April 1933 in Sutton, Surrey, England. She died 12 February 2006 in London, England.


Marriage/Union Events for Terence Christopher STANCLIFFE\Susan Elizabeth KNIBBS:


Notes for Terence Christopher STANCLIFFE:

Also known as: Terry

Notes for Susan Elizabeth KNIBBS:



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Please visit my Notable KNIBBS Page for Susan

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From the Belfast News Letter - 19 June 1967:

Miss J. Newman, treasurer of the Ulster Women’s League, Non - Subscribing Presbyterian Church in Ireland, handing over a cheque for £2l0 to Miss S. Knibbs, welfare secretary of the British Diabetic Association, at the quarterly meeting of the League in Ballycarry Old Presbyterian Church on Saturday.
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From the DiabetesUK web site we learned of the death of Susan Knibbs:
Susan Elizabeth Knibbs (CBE)
Many members of Diabetes UK will be very saddened to hear of the death of Susan Knibbs on 12 February 2006.
As Director of Care Services at Diabetes UK (then the British Diabetic Association) from 1985 to 1993, Susan placed high value on promoting diabetes education to patients and healthcare professionals alike.
While at the British Diabetic Association (BDA) , Susan initiated the professional services section to extend the BDA's educational work within the healthcare profession. Since then, professional sections have become more inclusive. Susan was ahead of her time in this process.
After her retirement as Director of Care Services at Diabetes UK, she acted as a trustee of the organisation.
In January 2000, Susan was awarded a CBE in recognition of her services to people with disabilities.
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Susan's obituary appeared in The Guardian Newspaper on Wednesday March 15, 2006. It was extracted from the full version of an obituary, which was written by her partner of 32 years, Terry Stancliffe. I am extremely grateful to Terry for sharing this with us.

Susan Elizabeth Knibbs, CBE

Born 10 April 1933 (Sutton, Surrey), died 12 February 2006 (London)

Susan Knibbs transformed a lifelong personal struggle with impaired health, in the form of insulin-dependent diabetes, which struck her at
only four years old, into an impetus and even a tool to help others. She lived with insulin-dependent diabetes for nearly 69 years (and a
number of people with diabetes have cited her as an inspiration by her example as well as by her help).

Many years of her career were spent furthering the work of the British Diabetic Association (BDA, now known as 'Diabetes UK'), latterly as
director of care services.

Susan had sharp insight and was especially aware of one of the peculiar features of the 'diabetic life' (as it was called by Dr R D Lawrence,
who was one of the pioneering UK physicians in the field, himself an insulin-dependent diabetic, and whose patient Susan also was in her
early years): That is, the ingredient of knowledge and skill on the part of the patient, as well as on the part of the health-care
professionals, is an essential part of the foundation for treating diabetes and for successfully mitigating its effects. Accordingly, she
placed a high value on promoting diabetic education to everybody concerned, and not only to patients, but also to physicians, and other
medical professionals together.

In line with these aims, during the first of Susan's two separate terms of years in this work, during the 1960s, she initiated the formation of
a professional services section. The purpose was to extend the BDA's educational work within the professions ancillary to medicine, and to recruit them more and integrate them more to take part in its mission. (This had particular significance at a time when the existing medical section of the BDA was open to those who were qualified as physicians, but it used not to be open to those in other professions relevant to medicine. In the years since then, professional sections of the BDA amalgamated and became more inclusive. Susan was ahead of her time in starting this process of becoming more inclusive.) Later on, in the later 1980s and early 1990s, Sue directed and overhauled the BDA's care and advice services, as well as taking part in national and Europe-wide initiatives for the improvement of diabetic care.

Also in line with her emphasis on diabetic education, Susan was anxious that the significance of pioneering efforts to bring expertise about
diabetes into the homes of those who have to live with the condition should not be forgotten, and that pioneering work -- especially by women -- should be remembered. Susan brought to publication the memoirs ('Chronicles of a Diabetic Service', published by BDA, 1989), of Dr Joan Walker (1902-1995), whose groundbreaking work, centred at Leicester Royal Infirmary in the 1940s and 1950s, had first introduced the use of 'diabetic health visitors', and had included the first whole-population survey of a British town for the prevalence of diabetes. [Unfortunately in the NHS of the present day one cannot assume that past practical advances of this kind have been built on, or even retained. There is a big risk that they may be forgotten.]

Susan co-authored a chapter on the 'Social and emotional complications of diabetes' in the book 'Complications of Diabetes' edited by Prof H Keen et al, (published by Edward Arnold, 1975).

Susan was also an original instigator of the foundation of the Long-Term Medical Conditions Alliance (LMCA), and she was also its first chairman (about 1989). She saw LMCA as providing an essential help in the task of making governmental authorities properly aware of the needs of people affected by a variety of long-term medical conditions, and of the diverse specialised medical charities which aim to minister to their needs.

For several of the years intervening between her two terms of service at the BDA, Susan found the time and strength as a qualified social worker to undertake the heavy, and often thankless, tasks of child protection work. She brought to this work, as to so much else, her qualities of emotional insight and kindliness, together with a commitment to completing the tasks presented to her by her casework in the light of a sympathetic human evaluation: she was certainly not one to permit any predefined and mindless bureaucratic formula to limit her ideas about what it might be appropriate and needful to do for the case in hand. Her conscientiousness and sympathetic commitment made hers an unusually good as well as a 'safe pair of hands'. She could have been entrusted, and probably should have been entrusted, with more directing authority than she was actually allowed to exercise in this field.

After Susan's retirement as director of care services at the BDA, she continued for several years to work in her fields, taking part in
initiatives to establish healthcare links between the BDA and diabetic healthcare workers and groups in eastern Europe, and acting as a trustee of the British Diabetic Association and other social charities.

She also became a member and deputy chairman of a UK governmental advisory board (Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board) for
assessing the needs of people with disabilities.

In January 2000 Susan was awarded the CBE in recognition of her services to people with disabilities.

Susan's delights included music and gardening. For much of her life she was an enthusiastic amateur choral singer. She helped for a time to underpin the activities of the London Choral Society as its secretary as well as a singing member, especially in the 1960s, towards the end of the period when its conductor was the late John Tobin, whose musicianship she admired. Later on she sang in smaller-scale choirs,
and in latter years she turned again to the violin that she had begun to study in her youth, and to the viola, making many friends at the
Kingston and District Chamber Music Society.

She once said that it was while working in her small garden and on her allotment in Wimbledon that she felt as if she was without a care in the world.

In early 2002 Sue was diagnosed with breast cancer, and after the surgery she became infected in hospital with the dreaded MRSA microbe. It was in good measure thanks to her lifelong personal diligence with the management and control of her own diabetes that she survived this infection at all. But on the whole her health never really recovered, and her activities were limited by increasing neurological disability, progressively resembling the results of stroke. This affliction tragically deprived her by degrees of her powers of speech and muscular coordination - by stages 'locking her in', impairing her ability to communicate while leaving her in possession of her awareness and rational faculties, albeit slowed.

She bore with characteristic courage, over her last few years, the burdens of her increasing neurological disability.

Sue is deeply mourned by her partner since 1974, Terry Stancliffe, and by her sister and brother-in-law Jill Reynolds and Mike Reynolds and by her neices, their daughters Sarah, (Dr) Lucy and Emma Reynolds, and by many friends.

TS


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And from The Times newspaper in London on 12th April 2006:

Susan Knibbs, CBE, diabetes expert, was born on April 10, 1933. She died on February 12, 2006, aged 72.
Susan Knibbs spent many years furthering the work of the British Diabetic Association, latterly as director of care services, and was also deputy chairman, until 1999, of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board. She herself survived with insulin-dependent diabetes for nearly 69 years.
She placed a high value on promoting diabetic education not only to patients, but also physicians and other medical professionals. She initiated the formation of a professional services section of the BDA in the 1960s, and directed its care and advice services, as well as taking part in national and European initiatives for the improvement of diabetic care.
Anxious that those who have been instrumental in promoting awareness about diabetes should not be forgotten, she initiated the publication of the memoirs of the Leicester physician, Joan Walker (1902-1995), who first introduced the use of diabetic health visitors and had established in the first whole-population survey of a British town the prevalence of diabetes. Knibbs co-authored a chapter on the social and emotional complications of diabetes in the book Complications of Diabetes (1975).
She was appointed CBE in 2000.

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The "Susan Knibbs Trust For Diabetes Care And Education" London, United Kingdom, was created in Elizabeth's memory. It's main objectives are to promote good Health-Care of People with Diabetes Mellitus, together with the Education of People with Diabetes Mellitus, and of those who care for them.



Sources for Susan Elizabeth KNIBBS:

  1. Ancestry.com, England & Wales, Birth Index: 1837-1983 
  2. Personal Contact with Terry Stancliffe,
  3. Newspaper Article,