Barbara Robb (née Anne, 15 April 1912 – 21 June 1976) was a British campaigner for the well-being of older people, best known for founding and leading the pressure group AEGIS (Aid for the Elderly in Government Institutions) and for the book Sans Everything: A Case to Answer.

[1] A professional psychotherapist, Robb founded AEGIS after witnessing inadequate and inhumane treatment of one of her former patients, and other elderly women, during a visit to Friern Hospital.

AEGIS campaigned to improve the care of older people in long-stay wards of National Health Service (NHS) psychiatric hospitals.

In 1967, Robb compiled Sans Everything: A Case to Answer, a controversial book, detailing the inadequacies of care provided for older people, which prompted a nationwide scandal.

Although initially official inquiries into these allegations reported that they were "totally unfounded or grossly exaggerated",[2] her campaigns led to revealing other instances of ill-treatment, which were accepted and prompted the government to implement NHS policy changes.

[3] Born into a landed Roman Catholic recusant family in Yorkshire, Barbara Anne had a privileged early life, a convent education, and attended finishing school in Kensington, London.

On her first visit in January 1965, Robb was shocked by what she saw and heard on the ward: the patients' uniform haircuts, no activities, institutional clothing, lack of personal possessions including spectacles, dentures and hearing aids, and harshness from the nurses.

Through her unrelenting determination and her contacts with the press, according to Richard Crossman (the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services 1968–70), Robb achieved the reputation of being "a terrible danger" to the Government, a "bomb" which it "had to defuse.

The practices often evolved from attempts to devise time-saving methods to get through the workload and manage large numbers of patients in overcrowded environments, or were due to ignorance of modern psychiatric and geriatric treatment and care.

Robinson publicly criticized the book, and announced on the BBC television news programme 24 Hours that he was sure poor care was almost non-existent and that investigations would demonstrate that.

The committees demonstrated their assumptions, about the excellence of nursing care and that the NHS was "the best health service in the world",[27] and they held excessively negative ideas about older people and mental illness.

[29] The committees lacked professional experience of investigating government appointed boards which had neglected their responsibilities to the detriment of the population they served (such as at Aberfan in 1966).

[33] This fitted with the observation of Max Beloff, Professor of Government and Public Administration at Oxford, that "most inquiries are so manned that they turn out to be nothing but the system looking at itself, and finding more to admire than to blame.

[36] An employee at South Ockendon Hospital, Essex, anonymously sent Robb pages torn from a ward report book, describing severe injuries probably inflicted by staff on a patient.

The day Crossman revealed the Ely Inquiry findings in the Commons, he also announced plans to establish an NHS hospitals' inspectorate to help ensure higher standards.

[41] The Ely Inquiry, along with those at Farleigh, Whittingham and South Ockendon,[42] vindicated Robb and Sans Everything, although the NHS authorities made no public apology.

[43] Robb continued to exert pressure on the government to implement proposals, through the press, Members of Parliament, peers, including Lord Strabolgi, and directly into the DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security) via Abel-Smith.

[45] Crossman, with Howe, Abel-Smith, Robb, Peter Townsend, Bea Serota and some others, made a powerful case for making improvements and allocating more funds to the long-stay hospitals.

[51] Sans Everything also linked to campaigns to improve nurses' education and conditions of employment[52] and to the development of the new specialty of 'old age psychiatry,' taking a proactive and rehabilitation approach to mental illnesses in older people.

"[54] Claire Hilton, Improving Psychiatric Care for Older People: Barbara Robb's Campaign 1965-1975 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319548128