Obituary: Andrea Pickup, aid worker

She joined the initial aid convoy to the country in 1991, and unlike many volunteers at the time, stayed with it, making an incalculable difference to many lives, without fanfare but with Yorkshire humour and down-to-earth common sense.

Some of her efforts on the welfare front line were documented in programmes filmed and broadcast by Yorkshire TV, which showed her as direct, honest but also formidable when crossed – as when a state-run institution in which three sisters had been trapped since childhood tried to prevent them from moving into a house that had been purpose-built for them. Ms Pickup and her partner, Richard, were seen battling the might of Romanian bureaucracy to win their freedom.

Born in Balby, Ms Pickup grew up with three sisters and two brothers, and despite a widely-travelled childhood with a father in the RAF, she always regarded Doncaster as home.

The travelling began again when she volunteered to join an aid convoy heading for an orphanage in the rural village of Tatarai in post-revolutionary Romania. She found a hell-hole into which handicapped and unwanted children had been consigned by the Communist regime of Nicolai Ceaucescu. Like other such places across the country, it was described officially as being for the “irrecuperable” or beyond rescue. The children abandoned there were unlikely ever to get out and endured dreadful lives, often being fed from buckets and forcibly restrained.

Ms Pickup, by then the mother of two adult children, was so shocked by what she saw that she committed the next 30 years to Tatarai. With the support of family and friends, she made several trips a year, bringing practical supplies and much-needed hope. She set up and ran charity shops in Doncaster to raise funds, and battled the Romanian authorities, with dogged determination, to defend the interests of the young people who by now called her Mama Andrea.

The 50 residents – some able-bodied, some severely physically handicapped and many with debilitating mental illnesses – had been institutionalised from early childhood and had all suffered abuse and neglect. She helped provide plumbing, sewing machines and kitchen equipment, music players and a working TV to provide a connection with the outside world, and instigated efforts to provide therapy and elementary education.

Practicalities mattered, but for children who had no parents to love them or families to care, it was the personal touch that was life-changing. Since 1991 she saw to it that every resident received an individual birthday card and present, often for the first time in their lives. The annual Christmas parties, with gifts for all, were the highlight of the year.

She carried on even after a diagnosis of cancer some 20 years ago.

She is survived by Richard, her children Samantha and Justin, and six grandchildren.