Elizabeth Campbell, 1924-2010

Teen drug overdose a call to arms

Inspirational ... Elizabeth Campbell's concern for her son led to the Peer Support Foundation.

Published November 4, 2010 in the Sydney Morning Herald

Elizabeth Campbell was the founder of the Peer Support Foundation, a nationwide charity that trains teachers to run peer-led student leadership skills training. More than 1000 schools and 200,000 students in primary and secondary schools are involved each year and its programs help to develop better student relationships and prevent bullying.

Campbell's creed was "Caring people in a caring world". She was a nurse, science graduate, writer and loving mother but her vision for the foundation grew from her concern about her son, Stephen, experimenting with drugs when he was 15.

No doubt her faith sustained her but Campbell was also a woman of action and she decided that positive intervention in schools was required.

Her aim, says ABC presenter, author and friend, Caroline Jones AO, "was to provide children with the tools for living a creative, contributing and happy life".

"In working as a presenter, I've met hundreds of people," Jones says. "Elizabeth Campbell was outstanding among them, for her inspiration and leadership."

Jones also helped out as a Peer Support trainer for two years, saying: "I have a vivid memory of keeping pace with her along Henley Beach in Adelaide as she focused her passionate enthusiasm for another day's Peer Support workshops."

Elizabeth Annita Yandell was born on June 24, 1924, in Sydney. When she was 15, she met Don Campbell at a school fete and he went home and told his mother he had met the girl he was going to marry.

After leaving school, Campbell trained in nursing at Prince Henry Hospital and won the Matron Kellett prize for the highest marks in the final exams. She then worked for several years in the Northern Territory nursing service. She and Don married in 1949 and went to live on his family property, Yarrawonga, near Bombala, outside Cooma.

Of her marriage, Campbell wrote in her autobiography Too Late for Tom: "I was a country housewife ... but I did not have any children. It was four years since Don and I married, and to live in the country and not have any children was a failure of enormous proportions.

"At that time, a wife's most vital role was to produce sons to ... maintain the continuity of the family on a grander scale to build a dynasty."

They decided to adopt and Don went to his friend, Dame Mary Gilmore, for references.

Apparently, Dame Mary wrote "the child these people adopt will be lucky" and in 1955, the Campbells were offered a little boy.

The baby, Stephen, had the largest layette in Monaro and a huge family christening.

Campbell had qualms about bringing Stephen up in the close-knit community. The child came to her crying, aged 2½, asking who his true mother was.

He had heard gossip and Campbell decided she wanted to move: "He would have a better chance in the anonymity of the city, and we would never disclose to anyone that he was adopted."

They moved to Manly, where they stayed for most of the rest of their lives. In 1967, Campbell graduated with a bachelor of science from the University of Sydney and taught in high schools.

Stephen's struggles led Campbell to looking at ways to help troubled youth in 1970. The death of a 15-year-old student from a heroin overdose led to a pilot program being tested at Pittwater High School in 1971.

That year, she was appointed as a health educator for the northern suburbs of Sydney with a newly formed drug education section of the NSW Department of Health. Two years later she was promoted and in 1979 she became the national co-ordinator of the Drug Education Project, based in Canberra.

The Peer Support program took off from its one-school start and, with the help of talented educator Dennis Hanratty, 22 schools were running the course two years later despite the vagaries of government funding.

The current chairman, David Stanton, was involved in setting up the foundation in 1983.

Campbell was also an author. She and Don wrote a novel, The Demonstrator (1970), which became a film in 1971; she had an unpublished memoir, Coming Home; and the self-published Too Late for Tom. She received the Order of Australia in 1990.

Elizabeth Campbell is survived by Stephen, siblings William and Leonie and grandchildren James and Kylie. Don died in 1995.

Julianne Dowling