[4] She was appointed Chief Inspector of the Children's Department of the Home Office in 1965, which gave her the responsibility to oversee inspection of childcare services and was able to influence important developments.
[3] In the paper, Cooper noted deprivation had many forms and several causes, such as poverty, unemployment, lack of community facilities, inadequate housing, people's health and cultural factors.
She wrote depressed, deprived or "under-functioning" families and individuals who could not have adequate management tended to gather in areas with their independent sub-cultural lifestyles, sharing behaviour patterns, and felt more secure from criticism.
[3] Cooper retired in 1976 and did one year of training as a mature student at the National Institute for Social Work as preparation for the next phase of her life at grass roots levels.
[1][2][4] According to Barbara Kahan in The Independent, she was a heavily private and kind individual who "had no time for "fudge" and shallow thinking; she looked realities straight in the eye with a remorseless intellectual approach which was sometimes uncomfortable but always valuable.
"[2] She lived to travel extensively in her professional and private life, adored art galleries and opera and walking on the Sussex Downs.
[1] The obituarist for The Times said that as a social worker Cooper "was at the heart of most major developments in the field" and relished changed and challenge in something that "has never been free from controversy" following the conclusion of the Second World War.