My mother, Olive Keidan, who has died aged 95, was a psychiatric social worker who became a lecturer in social administration at Liverpool and Bangor universities.

She was born in Liverpool to Alice Walters and her Scottish husband, Thomas Tulloch, an engineer. After attending Holly Lodge school in Liverpool she trained in social work at Liverpool University (1942-44), then worked for the next two decades as an evacuation welfare officer, maternity and child welfare almoner, tutor, and a psychiatric social worker for United Liverpool hospitals.

In 1967 she became a lecturer in social administration at Liverpool University, a post she held for the next 16 years. During that time she worked as an editor of Penelope Hall’s Social Services in England and Wales, a textbook widely read by anyone in social policy, social work or social administration.

After taking early retirement from the university in 1983, she accepted an invitation to teach at Bangor University the following year, and when she finally retired from Bangor in 1990 she helped found the Liverpool branch of the University of the Third Age.

Outside social policy Olive was a keen amateur zoologist, botanist, dressmaker, cook, writer and artist. She was also a devotee of the Royal Shakespeare Company, while Liverpool’s Shakespeare Society had brought her together with Saul Keidan, a consultant paediatrician at Alder Hey Children’s hospital, whom she married in 1953. He died in 1966.

Olive was eternally optimistic and enthusiastic, and had a lust for life and a joy in all things. Her intellectual curiosity, love of the natural world, boundless hospitality, compassion and sense of fun touched everyone she met.

She is survived by two daughters, Jane and me, and her grandchildren, Jo and Sam.