A Tribute to Jennifer Luntz (16 February 1941 - 27 June 2022)
- Wits University
Born in South Africa, the late Jennifer Luntz completed a four-year Social Work degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg between 1959 and 1962. After she graduated, she worked for the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society, where Winnie Mandela was employed as a social worker. Despite Winnie’s later fall from grace, Jennifer was always conscious of the insights of Mandela into the evils of the apartheid regime. The Luntz family said that for the rest of her life, she often recalled what she had learned from Mandela during those dark times.
At the unveiling of her tombstone in Melbourne, her son, Stephen Luntz, said his mother had, in her work, been appalled by discriminatory practices in the treatment of patients who were her clients. “One of the issues she fought to address was the inequality in the provision of artificial limbs. She resolved this by pointing out that the poorer quality ones work out quickly and the cost of fitting new ones was more than the price difference”.
“She admired the teachings of Edward de Bono and recognised herself as a lateral thinker and encouraged us, her children, to do the same.”
When Luntz and her husband emigrated to Australia in 1965, her first job was as a social worker with the Victorian Society for Crippled Children and Adults, where she worked until shortly before the birth of her first child, Heather, in 1966. In her early years in Victoria, she also worked at Mt Royal Special Hospital for the Aged, at the Doncaster Community Care and Counselling Centre and the Repatriation Hospital in Heidelberg.
In September 1974, she began teaching at the new Social Work School before she left to accompany her husband to Oxford, where he spent a two-year sabbatical.
While in Oxford, she worked part-time as a locum social worker and took a one-year course in Group Psychotherapy at the Institute of Group Analysis.
Back in Australia, she continued this learning on a range of topics, including Transactional Analysis, Family Therapy, Supervision of Social Work Students and Freud.
Luntz was recognised as an excellent social worker and mental health professional. Whether in casework consultation, community collaboration, problem-solving or complex policy development, her empathy and fine analytical skills combined to produce creative outcomes for people. Throughout her career, Jennifer Luntz’s personal qualities, empathic concern for others, awareness of the centrality of relationships, directness in communicating and high, enquiring and creative intelligence shone through and guided her approach at every turn.
Underpinning all was her early learning in South Africa. According to her family, she never forgot from where she came . Her experiences growing up, as well as her social work training and ongoing experience, were crucial in shaping not just her professional values but her life values.
A statement issued by her family said: “She was passionate about social justice, advocacy for families and the empowerment of parents and their young. She was keen to see programmes developed that made a real difference for vulnerable families, particularly for their children. Her focus on the children of parents suffering from mental illness is a good example of this. She made a truly significant contribution to Social Work and child, adolescent and family mental health services in Australia.”
The inscription on Jennifer Luntz’s tombstone reads, ‘Social worker, lateral thinker and culture lover’.