Fred Edwards

Leading Scottish social work director and influential ecologist

Most people would have been content to boast, as did Fred Edwards, who has died of cancer at the age of 77, that they were director of the "largest social work department in Europe". But even the vast Strathclyde region could not contain his personality, energy, talents and ambitions. These traits, and the importance of the role his position afforded him, made him the voice of Scottish social work - a voice which, uncommonly, was heard south of the border.

But he came comparatively late to the profession where he attained such pre-eminence. Raised on the Norris Green council estate, Liverpool, Fred was the only child of Reginald and Jessie Edwards. Educated at St Edward's college, he spent 10 years with the Royal and merchant navies, during which time he earned a permanent commission. In 1957 he was one of 33 carefully chosen crew to sail Mayflower II (an exact replica of the Mayflower) across the Atlantic. He then spent a short period working in industry as a management trainee, but in 1960 he decided to become a probation officer in his native city, and took unpaid leave to gain a postgraduate diploma in applied social studies at Glasgow University. Nine years later, he had risen to become the director of social work for Moray and Nairn. In 1974 he became head of the social work department in Grampian, which that year was one of the nine regional authorities created by local government reorganisation.

In 1976 he went to Strathclyde. The region, with a population of 3 million, stretched from the Highlands to the Southern Uplands, with the vast conurbation of Glasgow in the middle. Social work then was self-confident, and (in Scotland at least), highly regarded. The more expansive role that Scottish law gave to social work, and the favourable political climate, made it much more of a potential force for social change than it could be in England.

Fred saw his department as an instrument to further social justice, to which he was passionately attached. His was a regime of change and innovation. He dismissed some of his authority's children's homes as "an industrial process, not a home". He created new services for people with learning disabilities and, far ahead of his time, involved older people in planning their own care. He called his welfare rights and community development workers his "urban guerrillas", as they encouraged people to challenge the system. He was one of the first people in social work to recognise the coming disaster of Aids and formulated a regional strategy to deal with it.

During the miners' strike of 1984-85, Fred authorised loans totalling £191,000 to unmarried miners. These were ruled illegal and the decision was taken to hold him personally financially liable - he faced the prospect of surcharge and bankruptcy. A vociferous campaign and public outcry eventually caused the Thatcher government to relent.

Fred was a man of contradictions. He was a bureaucrat and politician who also worked with alcoholics and homeless people in his spare time. He could be both kindly and insensitive to those with whom he worked; charming, yet abrasive. He was said to be ruthless, but was deeply committed to his staff. He knew that an honest mistake or an error of judgment were shortcomings to be learned from, rather than berated. He was warm, self-deprecating (allied at times with an amusing vanity) and humorous.

When, in 2005, he developed myeloma, he joked that, as a driven man, he was attracted to the idea of eternal rest. Fred never lost his values and vision in the daily grind of bureaucracy or the wielding of power.

In later years, he referred to his deep Christian faith as "public orthodoxy, private heresy". He said that it had grown more minimalist but more profound. He was strongly attached to the ecumenical Iona community. He could be serious but was never pompous. When he said: "I had an aspiration to righteousness, but my appetites kept getting in the way," he spoke the truth, but did so with his characteristic bellowing laugh.

On retirement in 1993 Fred proudly announced that he would be following "a portfolio career". This did not involve the lucrative consultancies and appointments to quangos that so many of his fellows collect. He became a full-time voluntary worker, a new career that encompassed the environment, religion and social justice. He gained a qualification in ecology and a national newspaper recently named him one of the UK's most influential environmentalists.

Fred believed that the command to love one's neighbour made him "responsible, as far as I can be, for the state of the world". It led him and his second wife, Mary, to establish a water purification and female literacy project in Cambodia in 2002.

He was named a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in 1992.

Mary survives him, as do his sons, David and Mark, his daughter, Susan, and his stepsons, Niall, David and Duncan.

Frederick Edward Edwards, social worker and ecologist, born April 9 1931; died October 18 2008